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the-letter-horror-lover · 2 years

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ring of the heart

Cinerraria

Summary:

The heirloom rings were precious, but their bond was a level more valuable above the ring.

Notes:

Disclaimer: Kuroshitsuji by Yana Toboso. I only borrow characters. No material gain is derived from this fanfiction.

Work Text:

Ciel was sipping a cup of tea.

In front of him, Lizzy sat in doubt. Where should you start? Is there a more appropriate word than that old-fashioned and uncute 'Ciel, I'm sorry' ?

Lizzy didn't realize the spoon in her hand continued to stir the contents of the cup.

Twinings tea , with a soft strawberry aroma . Lizzy loves the taste.

How classy Ciel's taste for tea is. Lizzy had seen a cupboard full of tea in Ciel's study. He wondered if the choice of flavors served this time had anything to do with what had happened last time, when Lizzy slurred the joke: the Scottish tea in the cupboard she had never tasted.

"Lizzy?"

Ciel's voice startled Lizzy. The girl put on a forced smile, then lifted the cup and took a sip of tea.

He waited for Ciel to ask: “Is something bothering you?”

Lizzy shook her head, placing the cup on the tray. He had found the right expression. "I just wanted to apologize about the ring."

Lizzy remembered her carelessness when she joined the dinner last night.

Actually it was their fault. Lizzy was too excited to dress Ciel with all kinds of clothes and knick-knacks that she found cute. However, Ciel could no longer hold back when Lizzy insisted on removing the Family Heirloom ring from her ring finger. It was a nuisance, and Lizzy was adamant it had to be thrown out.

Problems grow when Ciel refuses. Lizzy protests why Ciel loves the ring so much that he ignores his fiancé's wishes. Ciel insisted and Lizzy forcibly removed the ring.

The next second, the gold ring studded with blue diamonds slipped and shattered.

"Ah." Ciel's eyes flashed. Feeling interested. "You're still thinking about the ring?" He said as if yesterday's matter was just a breeze.

Ciel was surprised. Are all women like this? Often turning over past actions, rather than rearranging his mistakes as an acceleration to pave the way for the future? As far as he knows, Lizzy is a girl with this type.

“I just wanted to make sure─”

The girl was stunned, looking straight into Ciel's eyes. There is no evidence of hatred due to the ring issue. Ciel's face looked relaxed, like the ring wasn't just a treasure.

“─Are you really okay? Seeing your ring shattered?”

Ignoring her unanswered question, Lizzy still kept her gaze fixed on Ciel. He loved the sensation that those blue eyes gave off. There is a hidden warmth behind the eyes (which some say) is annoying. But not for Lizzy. The feeling is still the same, as at first sight.

"It's an heirloom ring. So precious to you.”

Lizzy confirmed her regret.

Because the fragment of the ring that Lizzy saw lying on the floor yesterday was like the incarnation of her heart that was also broken into pieces.

This girl is not happy to let a little anxiety reign to tease her. While Ciel let everything that passed be trampled underfoot.

Ciel felt that he had found a point of difference between the two of them. However, if the garden alone looks beautiful with the variety of colors - the divergence contained in every inch of the soil, it is more amazing that the two individuals who are opposite but able to make compromises under the same shade.

"Of course. It 's just a ring. I don't like lying. You know that, Lizz?"

Ciel made hand gestures under the table, out of sight of Lizzy. The left hand was in a clenched fist as it was lifted onto the table. Ciel smiled triumphantly.

"Besides, I've got a new ring," Ciel continued enthusiastically. "This!"

Lizzy blinked. He was shocked. A ring! With a blue diamond enthroned on Ciel's ring finger. It's like an old ring.

Even though the shattered ring was already thrown out of the window by Ciel. Yesterday, Lizzy saw it with her own eyes.

And while they sat enjoying their morning tea, Lizzy didn't see a ring either. The ring should have looked so obvious. At least it sparkled in the morning light. Was it because he was too busy thinking about his regrets that he neglected to pay attention to Ciel's fingers?

"Wow!" Lizzy has not had time to ask questions about the origin of the ring. Did Sebastian buy it from the diamond shop in town? But when! The ring was broken just last night right? Or is the head of the Phantomhive family secretly stockpiling another ring?

“That ring…?”

Lizzy considered the truth of the last speculation. "You got a new ring? Even though I was just about to ask Papa to find a replacement for the ring.”

Ciel tilted his head. "Just save your Papa's money for your sixteenth birthday."

Ciel did not give Lizzy a chance to dodge, he already stood up and said the command in host style. "Come on, Lizzy. We take the train into town. Was that what you wanted?"

The girl got up from the chair and followed Ciel. "Papa's money is more than enough for my birthday, Ciel."

"But thank goodness." Lizzy's smile widened. The answer to the mystery of the ring's origin is not important. It's good that they got back together. Mutual awareness of each other, carry the heirloom ring is important, but the level engagement bond is more important above the ring.

"I'm glad to see your ring is back. Come on, let's go for a walk together, Ciel.”

The girl walked to match Ciel's pace. His arm wrapped around his fiancee's arm.

They walked side by side through the greenhouse garden, toward the horse-drawn carriage that was waiting at the outer gate.

Secretly, Ciel stole glances at Lizzy. He swore he would protect her sweet smile no matter what the price was.

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the-ghost-king · 3 years

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the term malewife isn’t a very nice term to use...

A man who acts as a wife and is inferior to his #girlboss girlfriend.

Person A: I just got myself a malewife. He's gonna clean my kitchen and watch me download custom content for the sims.

Person B: Sweet! You must be such a girlboss

^^urban dictionary. It’s just confirming to the sexist stereotypes that perceive and expectation of what a wife should act like. It’s quite harmful

It's a parallel to girlboss which is conformity to the sexism within corporate America:

"it becomes inescapably clear that when women center their worldview around their own office hustle, it just re-creates the power structures built by men, but with women conveniently on top. In the void left after the end of the corporate feminist vision of the future, this reckoning opens space to imagine success that doesn’t involve acing performance reviews or getting the most out of your interns." (here)

The word girlboss comes from a book quite literally called #girlboss, in parallel to the negative aspects of this book people eventually rebranded the term "malewife" to parallel it (malewife was originally an nsfw type thing)

In the malewife/girlboss "system" it's essentially the swapping of the problematic aspects, expectations, and socialization of men and women within a relationship

"Girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep" was a meme started to pick on the idea that women should become men and enforce the sexism within corporate society, and I'm sure it was a jab at the book the word came from as well.... "Manipulate, mansplain, malewife" was created to parallel the original meme

So yeah, the whole concept is mocking sexism within corporations and and modern relationships and showing how ridiculous it is. Girlboss mocks the idea of 2014 (largely) white feminism within America.

In example the original meme (created on Twitter) is intended to make mockery of Karen-types:

On January 12th, 2021, Tumblr user missnumber1111 posted, "today’s agenda: gaslight gatekeep and most importantly girlboss," garnering over 43,500 notes in a month (shown below). On that day, Twitter user @CUPlDL0VE posted, "my agenda is gaslight gatekeep and #girlboss," the first instance of the phrase on Twitter.

And a day later on January 13, 2021 Tumblr user a-m-e-t-h-y-s-t-r-o-s-e reblogged the post along with a photoshopped image of "Live, Laugh, Love" wall art instead reading, "Gaslight every moment, Gatekeep every day, Girlboss beyond words" (shown below). On January 18th, the image was reposted to Twitter for the first time.

Malewife doesn't hold those same implications however... The term malewife which is now being used to parallel girlboss achieves it's origins from p*rn, now I'm not an nsfw blog or someone who blatantly discusses nsfw concepts on my blog so I'm not getting super into it but there's a few places it comes from: femdom, bdsm, and feminization kinks... All of which have a connection to queerness in their own right but I don't feel comfortable going into the complexities of that with so many younger people following me.

On February 15th, Tumblr user @relelvance posted, "Manipulate, mansplain, malewife" as a male-themed opposite to "gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss," garnering over 27,000 notes in four days. The post was screenshotted and reuploaded by Twitter user @nortoncampbell on the same day, garnering over 14,200 likes and 2,800 retweets in the same span of time (shown below).

Urban dictionary's explaination of "malewife" is not only harsher than what malewife was intended to mean, but also removes the context of origin from the word- making it something new, different, and erasing the history of who originally used this word.

Because of Malewifes origins vs Girlboss origins, malewife is a less problematic term than girlboss and is more "affectionate" because the term malewife and it's use (up until recently) involved the man acknowledging that he wanted to be the "wife" in his relationship. There's a variety of reasons someone might do this, but it can generally be summed up as a mixture of personality and also personal wants.

I do think it's important to also note that although these words are being "glamorized slightly" they're still intended and being used in a memeing manner, but they're also used to quickly denote arbitrary traits in an individual and categorize those traits...

Although there's lots of conversations to be had for a variety of reasons about the origin and use of the word "girlboss" in relation to sexism, up until recently the world "malewife" was something claimed by men, something men wanted to be called, and something that men who used the term wanted to reference them.

Malewife is about "stepping-up" to "take on" "female" social roles, and it's something that at least some women would be happy to see in society:

"...We have been told that we can have it all, but so far we have noticed that it is extremely hard work having it all, because you still have to do everything that your mother did but now you have to do everything your father did as well. Except that your father had your mother waiting at home with a gin and tonic and his slippers when he came home from work, and you have the washing up and the shopping and a few screaming brats as well as a bloke with his feet up on the sofa watching the football... " (via. Victoria Mary Clarke)

And I don't think that she's wrong at all. Women are still expected to do so much more than men in society without equal reward.

Malewife exists as a a sort of fantasy removed from the truth of society. It's an idea that a husband can be waiting at home to care for his wife, and in this instance it benefits the woman- unlike Clarke's situation above, the woman comes home from a long day and is able to relax without the pressures of society and her life.

Where housewife is a word that holds its origins in forced subservience, malewife is a term that is showcasing men "picking up the torch" in regards to housework- where housewife is socially forced, and girlboss is reversed social compliance, malewife is the rejection of social expectations.

Malewife is about men finding a place in their life's and relationships to make themselves more than a paycheck. To say "I can be emotionally there for my spouse, I can clean a toilet, and drive kids to school, and I don't treat my spouses wants as something expendable". In a society in which men are often demeaned, mocked, and scorned for picking up socially female roles (say hello to misogyny and gendered contamination!)

The Urban dictionary definition, is not only too harsh- but not the way in which the word is intending to be used, because that's ignoring the origins of this word, and the fact that men had a choice in becoming malewifes where women didn't have that choice. It should read more like:

Person A: Ah yeah, I have a malewife waiting for me, he's going to clean my kitchen because I've had a hard day at work and need a break, and then he's going to watch me download custom content for the Sims because I enjoy the game so much and it helps me take a break from life!

Women's wants were often ignored in favor of men's wants, so by the malewife saying he's going to watch his spouse play the Sims, he's really saying "I care about her interests" and by him picking up the kitchen cleaning after she's had a stressful day he's saying "I have a lower stress job so I can handle that for her and make her life a little easier" (because malewife doesn't mean he doesn't have a job).

In a society in which a man's worth is tied to his ability to bring home money and be emotionally distant, malewife is the rejection of this norm. Malewifes are going to be there for their spouse, they're going to step up and take on traditionally women's roles and they're doing it because they want to, because they like it, and because dividing chores into pink vs blue is wrong.

I also want to say, you can't flip a word around and say it does "this" because that's not how it works... Men and women are forcibly socialized in very different ways, the two binaries have very different treatment, and expectations within societies social constructs. If you could flip the forms of oppression that men vs women face (because yes, the patriarchy oppresses men) then you could also flip the forms of violence faced by trans masculine people vs trans feminine people- but that doesn't work either, because women will always be oppressed in the most public way to "make an example of them" while the patriarchy expects anyone who is male to "keep his mouth shut and fall in line". (I know that's worded poorly, but I've just written at least a couple hundred words and my brain is a bit fried already from various other things today- basically anyone perceived female or male will be treated in a certain way as a result of others perception of them)

Anyhow, all this isn't to say that the term "malewife" is inherently free of any form of flaw ever... Malewife is a newly mainstream word, it wasn't popularized until February 15 of 2021... So?? 5 days ago?? The origins of malewife and the social implications of malewife combined with the history of the word, don't make the word bad or impressive and it's not "upholding the ideals of a housewife" but instead a word which provides men freedom from male social expectations.

Can the word malewife come to be a word which enforces expected female social behavior? Yeah it absolutely can become a word to mean that, erase the history from the word, and give it to someone who doesn't know the history of the word, and someone who doesn't have an intimate understanding of gender theory, and you've got a recipe for hundreds more asks like the one you've sent me...

I can't find a single positive reason to use the word girlboss in an empowering way, but I can find more reasons to use the word malewife in an empowering way than not to do so.

So at the very least if all you come away from this with is that I don't personally use the word malewife to uphold female social expectations in a relationship but instead I use this word to provide space for guys to be allowed to be feminine, soft, caring, emotionally present, and worth more than their monetary value, then I guess that's okay.

#long post #asks #Anon #malewife #sorry for clogging your feed #i don't have a desktop rn

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saltytyrus · 3 years

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hi, ariana! if the losers were a superhero group what would their powers be and how would they have gotten together? would they be popular as heroes or would they be considered vigilantes/menaces?

Hi!!! I had a lot of fun with this, thank you for sending it in Jack! 🤗

Powers - I honestly kinda struggled here and couldn't choose just one for some (also warning, some are about to be very unoriginal :')

Bill - Super strength (imo it's very useful but also... kinda basic??? it just feels right 😂) + force field generation

Ben - Invisibility

Bev - Pyrokinesis + telepathy

Eddie - Super speed

Mike - Memory manipulation + Panmnesia

Stan - Zoolingualism (?? basically just the ability to communicate with animals bec!! imagine him with an army of loyal crows! he would always have a friend, this reddit thread is literally Stan living his best life :')

on top of that, just mind reading in general. He'd probably have a never again rule set in place after making the mistake of reading Richie's once. the material for that is endless 👌

ALSO, I'm being greedy but I'd love for him to have serenity inducement (here's to hoping that I'm getting all these powers/words right 😂)

Richie - Telekinesis + Teleportation (he would have so much fun with it)

Popular as heros or as vigilantes / menaces?

I think out of all of them Bill would definitely be a popular hero. I can see him actively and constantly seeking out situations where he can help people.

While for the other losers, I can see them just trying to lead normal lives. I don't think they would be all that interested in being put on a pedestal or in a spotlight (of any kind). And it's not to say that they wouldn't use their powers to help someone out if need be, just that they wouldn't go out of their way with a purpose of finding something/someone to save.

But also!!! because of Bill, they would find themselves often tagging along to make sure his dumbass doesn't die 😂 like one week it could be bill, richie & bev, and another just bill & eddie or ben etc depending on whatever he's trying to accomplish

Apart from that I think they all could easily end up being seen as vigilantes/menaces at some point. They would 100% set out to change/fix a system that they see actively harming people instead of helping, and because of that it would be a toss up on who sees them as a hero or vigilante/menace.

How they came together:

This is where I both blanked and somehow ended up over complicating it 😭

my brain refused to imagine them ever being separate and unaware of each other, so I was going to stick with them being school/childhood friends

but then I thought of a sky high situation where powers (if any at all) come in randomly throughout teenage years

So for this version powers would come in from age 17-20. The losers would be completely unaware of each other & Georgie still would've died as a kid, but instead by getting hit by a car while out playing. Bill would have a constant need to try and save people and it would later on be a double edged sword because:

I thought it would be fun to bring Pennywise into this. The losers would each have a neibolt version of themselves that would come out once their powers came in. They'd mirror their abilities, but would only be as strong as the individual loser based on however much they'd use/practice their power.

(I would probably have to change Stan's power to shape shifting for this to justify the random spider head running around town 😂)

Every single loser would end up being viewed (/framed) as a vigilante/menace of varying extents at some point. And because of Bill's power usage, Neibolt Bill would end up on top- both with being the strongest and fucking up the most shit around town 😭

The neibolt crimes would start out extremely small, like barely even punishable or noticeable aside from those around to actually witness it due to the losers themselves newly having powers.

But as it would add up the losers would begin to receive more and more dirty looks from peers & strangers and rumors would eventually follow. The losers would get so used to being accused of shit at a certain point that it would just roll off their backs. They'd probably chalk it up to bullies targeting them.

For Richie maybe it would even result in a cop visit to his house- but with nothing more coming of it due to having a solid alibi.

It would be annoying but bearable up until the moment that the rumors got swapped out for video evidence as the crimes became more and more frequent + serious.

I feel like Ben, Mike, and Stan wouldn't surpass the rumor phase while Bill, Richie, Bev and Eddie's neibolt half would definitely land themselves on tape due to their excessive power usage in comparison.

I love Eddie, he's my favorite character but the idea of him being the first of them to end up on tape is sending me. And it wouldn't even necessarily be over anything crime related, but something extremely embarrassing. Like imagine his neibolt self being found casually lounging in a dumpster on trash day and making the news over it. Just a story along the lines of "halted trash collections earlier this morning due to grimy teenager (Derry news would be that shitty imo 😂) found asleep in a dumpster. We're told that workers had to forcibly remove him after twenty minutes of refusal to leave"

And with his powers, Neibolt Eddie would've zipped away as soon as he was set on the ground before anyone could've even done anything with him or offered to take him somewhere.

...I am once again making a disclaimer that I love Eddie dearly, because what if the night before that he had done a little act of rebellion against Sonia & dyed his hair blonde, which in turn just ended up making him look even more guilty 😭

Okay, now for how they actually end up meeting:

For everything to work Bill would probably have to be one of the last to get powers (otherwise he'd end up on the news within months due to his usage & it wouldn't work for how I want it to play out)

Bev and Richie would definitely be one of the first two to get their powers & meet. Richie would randomly teleport into the convenience store she was working at, all out of breath and crouching behind some shelves. Initially she'd be spooked by his random pop in but would take pity, whether it was out of boredom or curiosity, and offer him a hiding space behind the counter (which he'd immediately accept & hop over for some reason despite probably being able to teleport behind it). After some small talk and Richie telling her that he was being chased by Bowers over some shit he didn't do, they'd come to find the common ground of being the brunt end of recent Derry high rumors and from there they'd stick together.

They would later track down the others (minus bill & eddie) by following frequent rumors with the goal of seeing if the same shit was happening to them as well.

6/7 losers would only realize that everything probably wasn't exactly a rumor once the crimes start getting recorded/aired. They would have Eddie's experience on the news to support the "devil duplicate" theory they'd come to after seeing Bill Denbrough, Derry's beloved hero and now apparent villain make the news. From there they'd set out to track down Bill to find out wtf is happening.

my brain is absolutely f r i e d, but I'm jumping back to go over how they found Eddie as a treat for myself :')

there are 2 versions, not all that different from each other, but one just really highlights Eddie's (knowingly or not) continuous pining over Richie. It 100% follows his neibolt dumpster news report & unfortunate hair-dying-timing.

Scenario #1 is Richie and Bev walking into the theater to see a (much cleaner!) blonde Eddie. Beverly would manage to keep Richie from immediately running up into his row, but would find her efforts useless five minutes into the previews when he teleports himself into a seat next to Eddie, nearly scaring him half to death. He'd playfully lean on the arm rest with a dopey smile like

"I personally favor the dumpsters up in Bangor but hey, I'm all for going local if you'd like to show me around sometime."

(??idk.idk.idk 😂 originally his opener was just "hey, weren't you on the news recently?" but eh). So anyways, Eddie would be a mess, nearly popping a blood vessel but would later find himself near tears of laughter due to Richie's commentary throughout the movie. Bonus if he tried holding in his laughter out of spite to the point that he broke with a full on snort and turned to see Richie staring straight ahead at the screen, red cheeked & beaming, already preparing his next joke.

Scenario #2 is that Richie works at the Aladdin for the concession stand and recognizes Eddie as he steps up to pay. Opening with "I dig the new look" (referring to his hair that's now growing brown at the roots) and Eddie's confused because he's 98% sure that he's never seen this person before but it clicks immediately as Eddie watches the shit eating grin grow on Richie's face. Eddie, wanting nothing more than to run away again, simply stays put and mumbles out that it wasn't him

And the last response he ever expects to hear is an "okay", sounding just genuine enough for him to look up and see a much softer smile.

It would catch him off guard, having someone finally believe him, or at least not openly fight him on it (even if he's sure that Richie is just humoring him) that he'd often find himself showing up to the theater thirty minutes before his movie, just hovering over the stands by Richie. Clinging to the excuse that it was just someone to talk to while he waited away from the harsh summer weather and the grips of his mother.

Panic wouldn't set in until the day that Richie asks him what movie he's waiting for and completely blanks, not having the slightest clue until peeking down at his ticket.

#hopefully this wasn't too hard to follow or repetitive #i tangled myself up in a web 😭 im going to cringe at this later (but seriously this was a lot of fun!)#the losers club #it #death tw #neibolt losers

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emy-loves-you · 3 years

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(Slightly) Less Useless, (Definitely) Gayer Chapter 4

Confronting the Princes

Chapter 3 | Masterlist | Chapter 5

Warnings: Some of this is in the POV of a predatory transphobe, so a lot of bad things will be mentioned (also, as I post this I realize that the first few lines could be seen as discussions of animal cruelty, no animals were harmed or considered being harmed in this fic)

“Okay, but wouldn't it get a little bit drunk?”

“No. The Carassius auratus would surely suffocate before it could become intoxicated. Besides, the chances of it even ingesting any liquid before dying is slim.”

“Ooh! Would it be like hotboxing, but with death?”

“I am not sure what ‘hotboxing’ means.”

“I’ll have to show you later!”

Virgil sighed as he entered the room. “You’re not getting Logan high.” Remus and Logan were sitting on the couch, debating something. Virgil pushed down his jealousy. Debating wasn’t exclusively between Logan and Virgil. Besides, Remus tended to discuss topics that made Virgil… uncomfortable, to say the least. Speaking of which…“Do I want to know what you’re talking about?”

Remus bounced lightly in his seat. “I was wondering what would happen if you put a goldfish in a tank filled with vodka.”

Ah, so a tamer topic this time. Virgil shrugged, heading over to the couch. “Mind if I listen in?” Remus shrugged, and Logan held out his arms. Virgil (a little too eagerly) accepted, moving to sit in his boyfriend’s lap. Logan’s arms moved to wrap around Virgil’s waist as he rested his head on Virgil’s shoulder. Virgil sighed, closing his eyes as they continued their conversation on drunk fish.

As the conversation continued, Virgil allowed his mind to wander. It’s been one month since Virgil confessed to his boyfriends. Not much has happened, surprisingly. Any time Virgil’s boyfriends weren’t busy, they’d all hang out at Janus’ house. Virgil was relieved to see everyone getting along, especially Remus. Remus’ intrusive thoughts and insecurities made him uncomfortable to go out in public alone. Virgil was happy that Remus was developing a positive relationship with Patton, Logan, and especially Roman.

Speak of the Devil. Roman suddenly knocked on the door. “I hate to interrupt, but breakfast is ready.” Remus squealed, running to the dining room. Logan and Virgil followed at a more subdued pace. It was currently almost noon, so it was more like brunch than breakfast, but it’s the thought that counts. Today was the 5-year anniversary of Janus and Remus’ relationship, and Janus wanted to celebrate by cooking breakfast for Remus. Considering the fact that Janus has never cooked a single meal in his life, this meant a lot. Janus had spent the entire morning attempting to make something edible with the help of Patton and Roman. Virgil decided to stay out of the kitchen, not wanting his own anxieties and possessiveness of Janus’ kitchen to cause interference.

Everyone took a seat at the dining table as Janus and Patton entered, each with a tray of food. There were buttermilk pancakes, eggs, and bacon. Janus took a seat next to Remus while Patton sat next to Virgil. They ate in relative silence, with the occasional compliment to Janus’ cooking (sure, the bacon was burnt and the pancakes were in multiple pieces, but it was good for Janus’ first attempt). Eventually, everyone finished eating and quietly talked amongst themselves. Logan and Roman were arguing over how to properly eat a pancake. Remus seemed determined to kiss every square inch of Janus’ face, making sure to whisper something in Janus’ ear between every kiss. Virgil and Patton watched quietly, holding hands underneath the table.

Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz

Roman looked at his phone and paled considerably. Logan glanced at the phone and sighed. “Just ignore it, Roman.”

Remus looked up. “Ignore what?” He looked over at the phone and read the contact name. “Why are they calling you!” He looked furious.

Roman huffed, shoving the phone away. “They call me once a month to try and convince me to stop being gay. They constantly call it a ‘phase.’ And according to them, the only reason I’m gay is that I thought it would magically bring you back somehow.” If it wasn’t such a serious conversation, Virgil would’ve snorted at the jazz hands Roman sarcastically made at ‘magically.’

Remus stared at the phone in silent fury while Janus got out his phone. He entered a number but didn’t hit call, just watching Remus. Virgil watched as Remus turned to look at Janus. Remus bit his knuckle as he looked at the phone. Janus showed him the number and raised and eyebrow. Remus sighed and brought his non-bitten hand to tug at his hair. Janus gently removed the hand from Remus’ hair, rubbing small circles into Remus’ wrist. Remus stared for a few more minutes before sighing. “We’re gonna need time to get ready.”

Janus smiled softly. “I know. I’ll help get everything together.”

Roman sat up, grabbing his phone as it stopped ringing. “Get what together?”

Remus turned to Roman with a shaky smile on his face. “Have you ever been in a limo?”

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Barbara Prince was surprised to hear a knock at the door. Today was both Barbara and her husband’s day off, and the two of them were in the living room. Barbara was dusting the mantel, while John was watching some sports game that Barbara didn’t care about. Barbara hummed a small tune as she set down the cleaning supplies and went to answer the door. She made sure to take her time; if someone wanted to talk to her that badly, they could wait a few minutes. Now, who could it be? Almost everyone is out on vacation right now.

Barbara Prince did not gasp at the sight of Janus Williams outside her house, thank you very much. Barbara never believed that she’d ever meet such a prestigious (or wealthy) individual. If Barbara wasn’t a faithful wife, she would’ve swooned on sight (never mind how Mr. Williams is several decades younger; after his mother died, Barbara’s sure the man would enjoy an older woman in his life).

If Mr. Williams noticed the staring, he didn’t say anything. In fact, all of his attention was turned towards the other man on the porch. The other man was also fairly attractive. He and Mr.Williams were both wearing form-fitting business suits with green and yellow accessories. The man seemed uncomfortable, biting his lip (which only drew attention to his face- or more specifically, his mustache).

Barbara snapped herself out of it, finally noticing that she’d been staring at the two of them for an improperly long amount of time. She gave Mr. Williams her best smile. “Hello. How may I help you fine gentlemen?”

Mustache Man slightly cringed before taking a deep breath. “Hello, Mother.”

Barbara froze for a second. “Roman? Oh, sweety! It’s so good to see you!” She quickly wrapped her arms around him, ignoring the way he tensed up “I see you took my advice, and I’m so proud of you!” She let go of him, only to pinch his cheek. “Look at you, all dressed up for business! And I see you know Mr.Williams.” She turned to look at the man in question, who’s face had stayed neutral the entire time. “I hope my son hasn’t been too much of a handful.” She giggled at the irony, hiding her smile behind her hand. After years of disappointment, one of her children were actually paying off!

Mr.Williams cleared his throat. “I believe we’ve reached a bit of a misunderstanding.” He made a gesture behind him, and Barbara finally noticed the vehicle parked on the street. Is that a limo?! The back door opened, and four men stepped out. The first man Barbara didn’t recognize; he wore a similar outfit with purple accessories. Barbara fought back a sneer at his shaggy purple hair. The next two people took her a moment to recognize; they both wore glasses and their suits each had sky blue or navy blue accessories. Barbara didn’t bother to hide her sneer when she recognized them. Logan Croft and Patton Morale. Roman’s ‘boyfriends.’ What are THEY doing here. She smirked. Maybe they’re here to apologize for all the shit they convinced Roman to put me through. I’ll let them grovel and beg for forgiveness. Barbara was so distracted by Croft and Morale, she didn’t even notice the last person until they were already on the porch.

Roman!? Barbara turned to look at not-Roman. The man chuckled nervously, biting his lip again. “It’s been quite a while now, hasn’t it, Mother?”

Barbara found herself freezing again. “Rebecca?”

Rebecca tensed up while the man with purple hair hissed out, “That is NOT his name!”

John chose that moment to approach the door. “Honey, who’s at the door?”

Rebecca took a deep breath. “I have just come to say a proper goodbye. You never respected my wishes to be a man, and you never respected Roman’s wishes to love who he wants to love. But we are both living happy and successful lives without the two of you. I ask that you never try and contact me or Roman from here on out. Good day.” With that, Rebecca spun on her heel and went to walk away. Mr.Williams touched Rebecca’s elbow and whispered something in her ear. Rebecca nodded once before walking away with Roman and his boyfriends in tow.

Mr.Williams smiled at Barbara and John. It reminded John of the smiles Barbara used to give the gay men who lived down the street. It reminded Barbara of a python, poised to strike. “If I may come inside, there is something that I would like to discuss with you, Mr and Mrs.Prince.”

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Virgil watched from his seat in the limo as Janus was forcibly shoved out of the house, the door slamming shut behind him. Virgil had to physically restrain Remus from getting out of the limo. Janus quickly brushed himself off, muttering something that Virgil couldn’t hear. He quickly made his way back to the limo, giving the simple order to take them home. Whatever he told the Princes, he didn’t share with the rest of them. Virgil watched as Remus and Roman curled up together. The two brothers were uncharacteristically quiet, with Remus rubbing small circles into Roman’s hands.

Roman suddenly grabbed Remus’ right arm. “Do you remember?” The rest of the question went unsaid. Whether because Roman didn’t want to talk much or because it was an obvious memory, Virgil didn’t know.

Remus chuckled softly. “Yeah. We climbed the old oak tree in the backyard. You fell out and I tried to catch you and suddenly my arm broke from under your fat ass.”

Roman nodded. “Do you remember what you said?”

Remus tilted his head. “I said a lot of things that day. I specifically remember that day being the first time cussed that bitch out.” He smiled softly. “But I don’t think that’s what you’re talkin’ about. Can you be more specific, Ro?”

Roman sighed. “You said that we would stick together. That you would never let me fall alone.”

Remus’ smile grew. “Yeah, ‘birds of a feather’ and all that. Why’d ya ask?”

Roman took a deep breath. “Does that still apply now? I know I pushed you away and it’s been so long but-”

Remus pulled Roman in for a hug. “Roman, you are my brother. You mean the world to me. I’m sorry I left you alone. But I promise that we’ll stick together from here on out.” We gave Roman a shaky smile. “Twins forever, right?”

Roman laughed, tears forming in his eyes. “Yeah, twins forever.”

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Taglist: @bisexualdisaster106 @self-taught-mess @itawalrus @arodynamic-enby @sanderssides-angst @whatishappeningrightnow @idont-freaking-know @cute-and-angsty-princess @artsy-enby09 @girl-who-reads @drarrymalecsolangelo @count-woe-laf @im-an-anxious-wreck @ent-is-undecisive

#useless gays #sanders sides fic #virgil sanders #remus sanders #roman sanders #janus sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders

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fymagnificentwomcn · 3 years

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Thoughts on kasim? And his relationship with kosem? Also do you think that murad envied him in some ways

I feel like kosem and Kasim’s relationship isn’t appreciated enough at all. I have never seen any edit or anything of them anywhere. What do you guys think of their relationship?

Kasim’s relationship with Kösem and Ibrahim was lovely! Makes you really wish they had succeeded and Kasim had become the sultan instead of Ibrahim... everything could have been so different.

The most problematic thing about Kasim was definitely his attitude to Bayezid because while yes Bayezid backstabbed them, he should have later taken a chill pill ultimately and instead of quarreling with him should have tried to focus on their common threat aka Murad. Yet there was still Gülbahar, who would never be conciliatory and of course Kasim does have his reasons to be scared due to suspicions of her being alive. Maybe if relations between brothers hadn’t been so bad, Bayezid would not have got that close to his mum and at least sent her away to some safe place? We might never know. Ibrahim was mad at Bayezid too intiially, but later let it slide.

Kasim is clearly well aware of Murad’s true nature from the start because he’s scared at the prospect of Murad taking full power already in episode 1 of Season 2 and remarks how Mu/rat will likely lock them all up, which later happens to him in just a few episodes. This, I guess, contrasts a bit with Bayezid’s naivety regarding Murad - he never expected him going as far as locking Kasim up with their mad uncle as punishment. Bayezid is all about obeying the rules, Kasim is more lax at the beginning, as his “love affair” showed, but we know Bayezid will later dare to engage in forbidden love too.

After Kasim is released from kafes, the relationship between all the brothers is never the same and it’s no longer as friendly as we have seen at the beginning when even Bayezid and Kasim were in very good relations.

Kasim has definitely a lovely relationship with Ibrahim - they are clearly very close confidants and he is very protective of his younger sibling throughout, even being there to comfort him when Ibrahim breaks down during Gevherhan’s funeral or afterwards coming to defend him from Murad when Ibrahim faces Mu rat and calls him out on the treatment of their mother and other people. I also loved when he tried to always keep him calm when they were in kafes, e.g. by trying to mention their childhood game.

I think that following Bayezid’s death Kasim matured and while seating in kafes truly wanted to become a merciful padisah and follow more into his father’s footsteps than Murad’s as he himself claimed. He also seemed to understand his mother’s feelings – he stressed he knew what she had been through and had done for them, how she still proceeds slowly even once he and Ibrahim are in cages because her feelings for Murad hinder her from acting decively. You can truly see in his talks with Kösem that he now wants to return to peace their family had had before Murad took the throne and he wants to have a little family with his mum and Ibrahim that could live in peace and without fear.

Was Murad jealous of their closeness?

Murad wanted everyone’s life to revolve around HIM. And again he only wanted his mother to focus on HIM. He never took into account she also cared about whole dynasty, including her other kids. She was forbidden in his mind to take any actions with thought about times when he would be gone.

This is why he got soo mad about her going with princes to the janissary barracks. He didn’t pay attention that Kösem had received reliable news from Kemankeş about janissaries being already on verge of revolt, Murad’s sons were told to be dead of plague, and that nobody saw the princes since they had been locked up by Murad like two years ago. Again it was widely known by then that the plague hit the palace and even Murad contracted it from his sons. Nobody knew whether Murad’s brothers were still alive, didn’t catch the plague as well and whether they were surely still alive or in sound mental and physical condition. And since they were only heirs end of dynasty could thus be near and for Ottomans no padişah meant no law, so riots etc. were allowed. It was also customary for palace factions to hide padisah’s demise or truth about his condition due to them fighting for their personal interests (and even in this case Yusuf managed to hide Murad’s later, correct diagnosis from even the Valide Sultan herself). Murad HAD to remember when the mob almost attacked to palace when they wanted to see the princes in ep. 31. Kösem was doing her duty and you can bet that if they had attacked the palace with him in it, he would have then accused Kösem of inciting them or not stopping them from rebelling. Similar case was when Ahizade vouched for him back in episode 31 that the princes were alive and well and Murad got mad because of course he is the Padişah, fate of princes and dynasty is all him, nobody will vouch for him even if this helps HIM (I just cannot even comprehend his sick logic). Again, she was at his sick bed, she left to take care of matters connected with state and her other children, and would have surely returned to his side after they returned from barracks if he had not stormed in. But he’s of course bitter she didn’t just sit at his sick bed crying all the time or better decided her life was over because he was going to die.Kosem’s whole life was balancing so many of her responsibilites.

When Kösem tells him that if he wants to punish anyone, it should be her, not her other children, of course he decides to ask for fetva anyway (and again he KNOWS he’s fatally ill and that would mean end of dynasty and does not inform the müfiti about it). It’s quite repeated pattern – he uses Kösem’s kids to demand obedience from her, just as he blackmailed her about locking Kasim and Ibrahim up if she did not leave palace. He knows she that’s the best way to make her obedient.

Murad in general wants desperately to turn the clock back, but things in the Ottoman Empire already changed and Padisah was no longer such “God” as before:

If it came to deposition, the queen mother’s acquiescence in the removal of her son preserved the bond between ruler and ruled in a reassuring way that all the niceties of Islamic law could not match. At such times the continuity of the dynasty could be maintained only by means of a living link between generations, and in the postexpansionist empire, it was the sultan’s mother who was that link. (...) Interregnums were periods of social disruption. Because of the personal nature of the bond between sultan and subjects, oaths of loyalty were considered to have lapsed at the death of a sultan. This led to the practice of looting and general insubordination until the next sultan had been enthroned and could demand the obedience of his subjects. At these times of potential disruption, royal women played a vital role in preserving dynastic continuity: by hiding the death of the old sultan and thus preventing social disruption, by protecting the interests of the new sultan, and by preserving the traditions of the dynasty. (...)

It is in this changing political environment that the significance of the valide sultan's role in depositions can best be understood. The mother of the deposed sultan performed the function of providing sanction for the rejection of the individual sultan, thus allowing dynastic legitimacy to be preserved. The mothers of three of the five seventeenth-century sultans who were deposed—Mustafa, İbrahim, and Mustafa II (r. 1695-1703)—were alive at the time of their sons’ depositions. There is evidence to suggest that each of these women was formally petitioned by the highest officers of state—the grand vezir and the müfti—not only to approve but also to assist in the transfer of authority. (...) The valide sultan’s role in these dramatic events was to some degree a formality: she was asked to ratify a decision that had already been made by leading politicians and religious dignitaries. Yet her sanction of the forcible transfer of power from one sultan to another was necessary because it symbolically prevented the rupturing of dynastic continuity. Despite the fact that Islamic legal tradition allowed rebellion against a sovereign who prevented the pursuit of the proper Muslim life (it was precisely this kind of argument that had been put forth to justify İbrahim’s deposition), the devotion of Ottomans to their dynasty was so great that the rebellion of the sultan’s servants against their master appeared to violate their oath of loyalty to their sovereign and to return ingratitude for the bounty he had bestowed on them (it was principally with this argument that Kösem Sultan countered the religio-legal argument). In being called upon to legitimate the subjects’ withdrawal of their loyalty, the valide sultan, as the senior member of the royal family, was endowed with the responsibility of representing the welfare of the dynasty as a whole, even if this meant sacrificing the interest of a particular sultan. (...) The valide sultan, as head of the imperial harem, was the one individual who could sanction the crossing of its boundary if necessary. In the absence of the sultan, she was the one individual who could exercise authority in both the outer and inner worlds of government.

Taken from: Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem - Women and the Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire

As such, Yahya Efendi telling him that even a Padişah cannot make such a decision like end of dynasty (and thus whole state) in bolum 56 is very poignant.

Murad generally wants to bring back old times of when dynasty centered around one person aka the current padişah and when loyalty was only to him, not whole dynasty. He wants to be the most important and this also comes out in relation with his own mother. He also misses how in past mothers usually had only one son, so obviously they focused solely on him, and their lives were supposed to be over once their son died, all they were supposed to do was to be custodians of their tombs and memory. He obviously would love such old times to come back.

I think people are more fascinated by relationship between Kösem and Murad, and while it is interesting, at the same time they miss they could never be a working “power duo” - they might have the same spirit aka forceful,charismatic and domineering personality, but ultimately it was reflected differently as they used completely different ruling methods and adhered to a different vision of ruling and sultanate. /And of course there’s issue of Murad’s attitude towards his mother and him accepting NO ONE’s support and influence, he was never one for sharing his power even a little. Valide ruling only harem was an outdated concept by this point, but it was what he wanted to turn the clock back to earlier and outdated concepts of sultanate and sovereignty/

Some cool edits:

https://winterhalters.tumblr.com/post/162640540301/k%C3%B6sem-appreciation-meme-moments-with-children

https://haticesultanas.tumblr.com/post/177842459565/kosem-and-kasim-the-evolution-of-their

https://winterhalters.tumblr.com/post/169304031176/kasim-wearing-his-mommys-colors

- Joanna

#Anonymous #kosem sultan #sehzade kasim #magnificent century kosem #muhteşem yüzyıl kösem #answered #mck #mothers and sons #kösem sultan #mods opinions #murad the reformer #more like in make ottoman empire great again manner #turning clock back and 'past glory'

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itsclydebitches · 4 years

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This isn’t really much of a defense as it is just a acknowledgement of the difference: Oz NEVER planned on telling anyone anything, if a way to stop Salem cropped he’d have probably still never told anyone. Ruby, DID plan on telling people, just after they earned her trust. The reason this is still a criticism is because SHE SHOULD FUCKING TRUST IRONWOOD.

Asking this to the fandom as an honest question: when do we learn that Ozpin never planned to tell anyone? To my recollection he doesn’t say that (and I admit completely it’s just my recollection, I could be forgetting something), but rather he says instead:

“Do you really think Leo was the first? That he didn’t say those exact same words to me? I’m sorry, but you have to understand that my behaviors are backed by experience. I’m not saying that I have reason to think you will betray me. I’m saying that I have reasons for the things that I do. The secrets I keep. I--”

(This is a speech that the group - and via them the audience - never has to grapple with because Ozpin realizes in this moment that the relic is gone, moving the conversation away from his defense and towards Ruby’s refusal to give it back/Oscar forcibly taking Jinn’s name.)

Saying, “My experience means that I have good reason not to spill these secrets carelessly” is not the same thing as “I never plan on telling them to anyone.” This is, in fact, the exact same reasoning that Ruby adopts: I plan to tell you things after you’ve earned my trust. Ozpin admits here that Team RWBY doesn’t have his trust yet. Not because they as individuals have done something to lessen that (though I’d argue that the group’s overall attitude makes trusting them justifiably difficult), but rather that platitudes - “You can trust us!” - have proven to be meaningless throughout Ozpin’s lifetime: “Do you really think Leo was the first? That he didn’t say those exact same words to me?” Here, Ozpin is in the same place with Team RWBY as Ruby was with Ironwood for weeks on end. I simply don’t trust you yet and you’ll just have to wait until I do. (Even though, as you say, Color2wheel, Ironwood had actions to prove his trust whereas Team RWBY just has those platitudes...)

The only “proof” I’ve heard in the fandom that Ozpin never intended to tell them about Salem is the fact that Qrow doesn’t know about her yet. The logic goes, “Well if Qrow doesn’t know after years and years of working with Ozpin then obviously he doesn’t plan to ever tell him at all.” It sounds damning on the surface but what this argument fails to take into account is what Ozpin himself points out, that his behaviors are “backed by experience.” Or, to put it more bluntly, this argument fails to take trauma into account.

Ozpin is grappling with trauma that, thus far, no other character has had to try and overcome.

Ruby actually gives us a good baseline. We can think of her trust as akin to an equation:

Being betrayed by one person (Ozpin) + encountering an ally who is doing everything possible to demonstrate trust (Ironwood) = needed a couple weeks in order to trust them.

Ozpin’s equation is more like:

Being betrayed by an unknowable number of people across a thousand years (Raven, Lionheart, and Team RWBY most recently) + encountering allies who do things that demonstrate that trusting them may be quite a risk (Qrow is called out for not being a reliable spy and is emotionally very fragile, Ironwood disagrees with Ozpin’s methods, Team RWBY is constantly pissed at him, etc.) = needing....?

How long does it take to trust again after all that? After a thousand years of people not just hurting you when they learn this secret (abandoning you for Salem, trying to kidnap you, kill you) but also hurting themselves as well (Qrow falls into an alcoholic stupor and only comes out of it when his niece threatens to leave him behind)? If Ruby’s experiences as a 17yo with (at most) two years experience outside the safety of Patch/Beacon means it took her weeks to trust again, how many years does it take someone who has been through as much as Ozpin? Probably the number of years that Qrow has been trustworthy “enough” to learn this secret but hasn’t. Needing more time to trust again because you’ve been traumatized by trusting others isn’t comparable to not trusting because you’re a bad person and you just didn’t want to. “Not now” doesn’t mean “never” and “I currently can’t” is not the same thing as “I won’t.” In addition, none of this takes into account that Ozpin kept silent during a time of peace when telling people (arguably) wasn’t necessary, whereas Ruby kept silent during a time of war when she knew Ironwood was putting time and resources towards a doomed plan. Those are radically different situations, even removing Ozpin’s trauma.

In the interest of boiling complex stuff down into more easily understood examples, let’s talk about another kind of trauma for just a moment. Something simpler, straight forward, and generally more accepted: a fear of dogs.

Ruby: I was bitten by a dog once. I wasn’t the worst bite in the world but it still effected me. Now I’ve met this other dog and he’s... kind of scary. Big. Looks mean. Barks a lot. I get intellectually that the dog isn’t attacking me and is showing that he will sit quietly if I were to approach... but I can’t bring myself to pet the dog yet. I need time.

The Story: Entirely understandable.

Ozpin: I’ve yet to have a good experience with a dog. I’ve been bitten by them throughout my whole life - which is over fifty times the length of Ruby’s. These bites have left scars. I’ve been mauled by dogs before. I’ve had people set their dogs on me. I get intellectually that all dogs aren’t bad, but it’s incredibly hard for me to pet any at this point, even those whose owners insist that they’d never, ever hurt me. I’ve heard those same words right before I was bit again...

The Story: Hmm. Seems suspicious.

Ruby: Okay! I’ve spent weeks with this specific dog now and you know what? I’m ready to pet him. I’m emotionally in that place now. There. I did it! Aren’t you proud of me?

The Story: We are! Wow that was so well done. You are such a good person for petting that dog and I’m sure your ability to do so is based entirely on your morality and has nothing to do with your individual experiences.

Ozpin: No, I still haven’t pet any dogs yet. I’m not ready.

The Story: Well Ruby pet one.

Ozpin: Forgive me, but Ruby had one bad experience with a dog. She’s been surrounded by other supportive, happy, loyal, gentle dogs her whole life! Has any dog ever tried to kill Ruby? I feel like that would have a bearing on how quickly she starts interacting with them again...

The Story: Nope. She’s just better than you.

Now replace all “petting dogs again” with “trusting someone with this secret again.” Before I condemn Ozpin and uphold Ruby, I’d like to see a version of Ruby Rose who went through even a fraction of what Ozpin has been through regarding trust, secrets, and absolutely horrific betrayal. Give me a Ruby who has told people the Salem secret and they leave her, attack her, try to kidnap her, kill her, deny her support, grow to hate her... and then lets see if it still “only” takes a few weeks to spill it again. Give me a Ruby who has to suffer through Blake abandoning her, or Weiss joining up with Salem, or Jaune trying to kidnap her to ensure his own safety and then we can start praising her if she trusts quickly after all that.

For me, it has never been established that Ozpin would have never told his allies this secret, only that his experiences mean he needs more than the average person to take that risk. I actually think having a Salem plan would have made all the difference. Reassuring someone that there won’t be repercussions for the awful thing they just heard is a great way to ensure they aren’t nearly as angry as they might have been:

Person A: I... accidentally left the gate open and the dog got out.

Person B: You what?

Person A: But don’t worry! I’ve already got a plan to get him back. Everything is fine!

Person B: It’s a damn good thing.

vs.

Person A: I... accidentally left the gate open and the dog got out.

Person B: You what? Well how are you getting him back?

Person A: I haven’t figured that out yet...

Person B: What the hell is wrong with you?

People like easy solutions to hard problems. It’s the first thing Ruby asks: We just learned that Salem is immortal and we know you’ve failed to get rid of her for a thousand years...but you have a plan to fix this in our lifetime, right? We don’t have to deal with this awful immortality business because you’ve figured out how to fix everything for us, right? And when Ozpin admits that he doesn’t have that solution fury gets the better of them. He’s punched into that tree. They drive him away. If Ozpin had been able to say, “Don’t worry! It doesn’t matter if Salem is immortal because I’ve found a way to circumvent that immortality! This reveal will have no negative impact on you moving forward,” we would have gotten a very different conversation. And very different actions on Ozpin’s part throughout his life. The whole reason he keeps Salem’s immortality to himself is because he has no way to circumvent it. He doesn’t want to tell people that this fight is (currently) impossible because that is what leads to them giving up/joining Salem/taking their fear out on him. There’s no longer a reason to keep her immortality a secret if the immortality is circumventable. A plan would have removed at least some of Ozpin’s (justified) fears. People aren’t going to attack him if he can easily fix this problem for them. If he can’t fix it? Well, then you’re disposable. We’re going to leave you for someone more powerful (Salem) or just cut you out of our life completely (Team RWBY).

What it comes down to is that Ruby’s experiences and Ozpin’s experiences simply aren’t comparable. It’s something he says outright in the story - “you have to understand that my behaviors are backed by experience” - but moving forward RWBY has chosen to ignore that. The man who has spent a thousand years being traumatized by trust going sideways can’t compare to the teen with just a spattering of experience under her belt trusting for the second time. Ozpin was Ruby at one point. There was a time when he trusted a second time and he didn’t get an Ironwood who sat calmly and accepted the news with such grace. So what proof do we have that without being so lucky (without a narrative that ensures Ruby comes out on top) Ruby wouldn’t have become Ozpin in time? There’s nothing intrinsic in Ruby that makes her a better person who is more able to trust others. It’s entirely that her experiences haven’t (yet) led to trust being a trigger for abandonment and assault. Ruby is just an Ozpin in the making because anyone can struggle due to trauma - even a “simple soul.” It’s a crucial difference and, frankly, I think RWBY has failed not to acknowledge it.

#rwby #rwde #mymetas #color2wheel

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no-name-mutt · 3 years

Text

And (Working Title)

Mostly unedited here. Probably many mistakes.

Ji-Woo Suzuki was six generations removed from her ancestor Shimazu Nariakira, a galvanizing feudal lord of Japan during the Meiji Restoration. Shimazu Nariakira’s most famous quote was words that Ji-Woo worked to install firmly into her life.

"if we take the initiative, we can dominate; if we do not, we will be dominated."

After years of war, scheming and destructive cajoling, Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910. Korea was considered a part of Japan until the end of WWII and subsequently, the fall of the Japanese Empire in 1945.

During this time, Ji-Woo’s great grandmother, Jeong-Ja was forcibly betrothed. Jeong-Ja (ji-young ja) was eleven years old. Jeong-Ja was arranged to marry Sora Nariakira. Sora abhorred the thought of marrying a Korean woman. Sora, as with most other Japanese people during this time, saw Koreans as second class citizens to the Japanese. In their marriage, Sora took every opportunity to order Jeong-Ja like a slave. One late night, Sora forced himself upon her and Jeong-Ja became pregnant.

A daughter was born, Hina Nariakira. While Korea was under Japanese control, it was initially illegal to change your name. As it were, Koreans that refused to change their names, were unable to enroll in school, receive mail or even receive meal rations. Eventually the colonial bureaucracy allowed the changing of names, and as much as 84% of Koreans changed their names. Speaking the Korean language was banned and Korean newspapers and printing houses were forced to close. Nearly 200,000 ancient and historical documents were burned. Korean youths were volunteered and conscripted into the Japanese army. Shinto shrines were built, and became places of forced worship. Japanese colonial policy became a clear policy of unlimited cultural erasure.

Hina attended school and became a voracious reader and journal keeper. Hina, as a product of her environment, became fluent in both Japanese and Korean. From an early age, it was evident that Hina was highly intelligent. Her vocabulary in both Korean and Japanese quickly surpassed Jeong-Ja’s and Sora’s respectively. Though Sora was quick to forbid speaking Korean in the household, Jeong-Ja taught her in private.

Sora frequently had Hina recite aloud his military orders. If there was ever a word that he didn’t understand, he would strike her. This was a sign to make the order as comprehensive as possible, though his reasoning was always, “Do not waste my time with pointless words!”

Life for Jeong-Ja and Hina was of unceasing malaise. Their only solace was in each other.

From reading Sora’s military orders, Hina became familiar with impending military movements, encampments and strategies. Hina learned of an upcoming landing of US Ships to discuss treaty possibilities. Hina devised a plan in which Jeong-Ja and her would flee their home to seek refuge with the US Navy. Somehow, discovering their plan, Sora attempted to stop the two from fleeing.

In a frenetic haste, Hina jumped on to Sora’s back, holding on to him with an arm around his neck. He drew his Manchukuo manufactured pistol, the Sugiura, and started firing wildly. Hina kept a dull pen-knife for protection and stabbed him three times in the chest, and twice in the neck. In a matter of seconds, Sora had fired every bullet in his pistol, one of which struck Jeong-ja in the head. She died instantly. Hina fled to the US Navy ship, covered in blood and alone.

The Korean peninsula has been in an imperial theater of war since the late 1800s. It remains a strong strategic naval position and is between three of the strongest and most hostile countries; Russia, China and Japan.

Hina found herself as a refugee, aboard a US battle cruiser. From Hina’s journal, we know that while aboard the ship, she was raped multiple times by a Japanese-American Navy captain. Hina became pregnant. Clinton James Suzuki was a rising star among the ranks and arranged his marriage with Hina. He thought that having a baby out of wedlock would be detrimental to his military career. Hesitant, and silently unwilling, Hina agreed to the marriage. Through this, Hina became a US citizen.The wedding was expedited and facilitated onboard the cruiser. As her belly grew, so did her hatred for Clinton Suzuki.

Hina silently imagined his death in whatever setting they found themselves in. If he choked while eating, she wouldn’t save him. If he had fallen overboard, she wouldn’t call for help. If he slipped and fell down the stairs, she would elect to simply walk away. When the two arrived back in the US, there was to be a Navy welcoming parade in port. All of the seamen were to be standing with their wives (if they were married) on the dock as the Navy cruisers came back to port. Though Hina’s husband would have preferred to not be seen with his very young and very pregnant immigrant wife, he thought it would be a great opportunity to rub shoulders with those higher in command.

As the ship was coming into port, the anchor was dropped, and four inch thick mooring lines were lashed from the anchor to the ship to the dock. Hina’s husband was the first one out on the dock behind the commanding officers, hoping that it would impress a lieutenant, admiral or anyone with any sort of authority. She happily let him stand as far away as possible from her.

As the last mooring line was being lashed, a massive and potent rogue wave rocked the ship, and snapped the thick cable. The cable whipped downward and cut him cleanly in half from the right collar bone, down through the groin. His body fell apart like a sliced melon. Hina was silently imagining him drowning in the bay, but she never could have envisioned that. For a second she was stunned, and then started to laugh hysterically. She was finally free.

Hina easily found translator work. Although Hina adhered to strict ideals of frugality, she made enough as a single mother to comfortably support her newborn son Kaito Suzuki. Kaito Suzuki stood an average five foot nine inches. His hair was short, poofy, and straw like. His arms and legs were thin and underdeveloped, though his torso was somehow, rather round. Kaito had a round face, unremitting acne and eyebrows in need of a good trimming. He attended public school. He was unremarkably below average. He found little interest in extracurricular sports and clubs; instead, he spent most of his time skipping class, smoking pot and hanging out with his like-minded friends. After barely graduating high school, Kaito was given an ultimatum, either find work or attend college. In the end, Kaito decided to move out of his mother’s house and found work as a second shift janitor at night and weekend garbage collector.

Kaito Suzuki and Ji-Woo I(the first) first met when she decided to stay late at the commercial real estate office where she worked. Kaito was just starting his shift, starting by collecting the garbage around the office. Ji-Woo I was a quiet, mild mannered individual. She came from a good home and an affluent community. Ji-Woo I was going through a “rebellious” phase and began making a flurry of short-sighted decisions all revolving around Kaito. The two developed addictions to different drugs and made small time scams in order to fund these new habits. Ji-Woo I unexpectedly became pregnant. The night they found out, Kaito grabbed her car keys and said he was going out for cigarettes and never returned. Hina was the only person in the delivery room when the daughter was born. Ji-Woo I was emotionless. She stared emptily at the crying newborn girl. Ji-Woo I looked to Hina in silent disdain. Hina nodded in affirmation. When Ji-Woo I was released from the hospital, Hina drove her to the airport and handed her some money. Neither Hina nor the newborn baby girl ever saw her again.

Hina decided to name the baby Ji-Woo II, after her mother. (Whom despite the situation, actually quite liked.)

As a baby, she cried constantly. Even in sleep, she murmured and wept in unsilence. Ji-Woo would stop crying only momentarily if she were fed pureed sweet potatoes or ripe apricots.

When Ji-Woo was six months old, she stopped breathing for nearly two minutes. Hina panicked, rushed to the emergency room. But by the time Hina arrived at the the hospital and Ji-Woo was breathing again and after that point, Ji-Woo never cried again. It’s as if she were an entirely different baby. Ji-Woo excelled in school and surpassed all of those around her. She had few friends throughout her youth. It wasn’t until her mid twenties when she learned how to simply “get along” with those around her.

Ji-Woo took a master’s degree in Japanese History. Then continued on to get a doctorate in Korean History. After a few bored years of teaching, Ji-Woo left to attend law school.

Everything about Ji-Woo was professional. Her skin was fine, with a healthy touch of melanin. She had high cheekbones and slightly sunken cheeks. A slightly upturned, pointed nose, symmetrical eyebrows. A single asymmetrically placed mole populated her face. She was beautiful. Equally strong and delicate, like the skeletal system of a great predatory bird. Her hair was long, to her lower back, though it was always pulled taut into a perfect braid. She wore simple, gold Tiffany earrings. She purchased them for herself. Ji-Woo’s wardrobe consisted mostly of well-fitting dress suits that obeyed her movements like a harshly conditioned army. There was never a loose thread out of place. Not even so much as a single piece of lint dared to adhere itself to her. She had an athletic, hidden, muscular build that I couldn’t help but to admire.

As a lawyer, Ji-Woo was ruthless. She constructed such pithy arguments, the opposition was often left speechless. And on a few occasions they were left literally stammering. Ever professional, Ji-Woo never showed any form of celebration or elation in victory. She spoke clearly, with seriousness and a dose of harnessed emphasis. Ji-Woo’s days were neither ‘good days’ nor ‘bad days’. She took on the day’s obstacles as if she had rehearsed them wholly the day before (though probably didn’t need it.).

The first time that I saw Ji-Woo Suzuki I was somehow dragged into a meeting of which I had no reason for being in attendance. I was struck by her. Though I prayed I could stay hidden, as a fly on the wall. Ji-Woo Suzuki led a team of class-action specific lawyers. Without ever speaking with her, one would simply assume she was the unquestionable leader. Only after an introduction, Ji-Woo Suzuki would offer to call her “Ji”, as a favor to you. It was not uncommon for people to reply to this offer by thanking her. Though, they were often left deciding whether to continue calling her Ji-Woo out of respect or interpreting her offer as an order. Most people continued to call her Ji-Woo or Ms. Suzuki.

I was staring at her. She was unpacking her case notes. People in the room started conversing. She uncapped a Montblanc rollerball and began to write. Just then, she stopped writing, wrinkled her brow in confusion and looked up directly at me as if to ask, “Who are you, and why are you here?” Her look was sharp, piercing but gentle. A needle and thread.

She looked right through me. And that was the first time I knew,

I was going to marry Ji-Woo Suzuki.

The meeting must have ended. I assumed so because the room had started to clear out. I hadn’t really been paying attention, not that I should have been. I wasn’t even supposed to be there in the first place!

I pretended to collect my things slowly trying to match Ji-Woo’s pace so we could incidentally leave the conference room at the same time. This was quite difficult because I had no belongings to pack up, nor a briefcase to put them in. So I took out my phone from my pocket and pretended to reply to an email. I looked up again and she was already pushing her chair in (when did that happen?!). She moved with intent. I hurriedly shoved my phone into my pocket and jumped up to meet her in the doorway.

“Hi”, I said, giving my best impression of someone far more casual than myself.

Ji looked at me quizzically, replied dryly with “Hello” and continued past me. Just like a fighter-jet breaking the sound barrier, she was gone, leaving only a potent echo. I must’ve blacked out, because the next thing I knew, she was already halfway down the hall. A paper came loose from her briefcase and she didn’t seem to notice.

This

was

chance.

I fast-walked down the hall as coolly as possible, “hey wait!” I called out. But she was already rounding the corner down the hall. I picked up the piece of paper, in perfect cursive writing it read,

I see you, do you see me?

5:00pm

My temple wrinkled in confusion. I looked up again and she was gone. The heart in my chest reminded me of its presence with a mighty thump. I felt myself sweat. Was this meant for me to find? I returned to the copy room and returned to my work.

But all I could think of was one Miss Ji-Woo Suzuki. One moment she was there, and then she was not.

In the periphery,

of where I wanted to be.

I felt invigorated. Anxious and curious.

Piqued.

I got back to the copy room and looked at my digital casio watch, 2:04pm.

My inbox of “to be copied” was now spilling out. I assumed position in front of the plastic, off-white monstrosity.

First, I’ll take the source material in my left hand! Then! I read the copy instructions and made the proper adjustments and number of copies. After the copies were completed I placed a single paper clip on the ream and set it in the pick up box. Organized alphabetically. To most people, the job would seem boring, though I would argue that there are quite a lot of nuances to it. For example: Eighteen copies of pages one through three, six copies of pages four through ten, and that’s an easy one.

A page goes in, the scanning light travels from right to left, and left to right, pages come out. I know the machine inside and out. I know because I have had to take it apart and reassemble it, not without hiccups, of course. I went home that day with a black ink stain on my chest. Like I was blasted by a shotgun, and bled black. The skin on my belly was still stained where the ink and bled through the shirt.

Occasionally pieces of dust or folded paper would cast a shadow on the rest of the page. It caused a ghastly, black, pixelated shadow to print on the copies. Sometimes the shadowed copies were fine to pass along, sometimes, they were better discarded.

At five pm, I stood outside of Ji-Woo’s office. I was nervous to enter. She sat behind a sleek mid-century desk with her legs folded. Her slate gray dress suit and Mac Pro reminded me of a brutalist era sculpture I saw once as a teenager. I didn’t understand the sculpture then, though maybe I do now.

She had nice legs, I absolutely understood that. I caught glimpses of her toned calf muscles through the gap of her desk as I paced as casually as possible in front of the open doorway.

After a few paces back and forth, I heard her call out to me, “You can come in, you know.” I froze. Then somehow came to find myself sitting in the chair across from hers. The desk remained between us. I didn’t know what to say, at that moment, I couldn’t be sure if I knew how to speak.

“I noticed you today in the Carter vs. Amadeo-Hastings meeting.” She said.

“No… I mean, yes, I was there. Just trying to learn what it’s all about.” Do you think she bought it?

“Are you interested in practicing law?”

“Uhm, yeah, interested? Definitely.”

I actually had only worked at the office for about a month. I was still fairly unclear on what business the office conducted, let alone the ‘partners’. Before, I worked at the busiest copy center in Seattle. I got let go after I yelled at a customer, “Stop breaking my shit!” and in my defense, they were going to break the

Konica Minolta c754e! Those things aren’t cheap, and the replacement parts take three weeks to get to the states.

“Would you like to go to dinner with me?” She asked.

I felt a draft in the back of my agape mouth. Ji-Woo liked a breeze in the office. I found that out later that night when she told me at dinner.

We continued to see each other after work every Tuesday and during the day on Saturday. This was when Ji-Woo allowed herself recreational time. I learned a lot about Ji-Woo’s schedule during this initial period of dating. I found her structure and stoicism quite sexy. She made all of the reservations at restaurants. And not just nice restaurants, she even made reservations for tacky hole-in-the-wall places that she knew I would like. A few times she would order for me. Like a mind reader, she would always order exactly what I wanted yet never in a demeaning way. She seemed to know exactly when I wanted to speak for myself and when I was comfortable with her ordering for me.

After about a month, midday on a Friday, she sent me an email. The subject line simply read,

“Tomorrow Night 4/16/2019”

Hi Kentaro,

Please meet me at my house tomorrow night at 6:00pm. We’ll go to dinner. I’ve made reservations at 7:30. Casual attire.

This was more or less the usual date query. Though, interestingly, she signed it at just Ji. Futhermore, she would usually ask to meet at six with reservations about the time it took to get to the restaurant. Surely we weren’t going somewhere that was an hour and a half away.

That night, I was talking to an old friend of mine, Leo, on the phone. I was telling him about Ji-Woo and I. About how I eagerly awaited those Tuesdays and Saturdays. And about the one time I asked her out on a whim on a Friday night. She declined. I was upset for a while. But respected her need for personal space, and strict schedule. “It’s just how she is”.

I told Leo that we hadn’t had sex. “That’s good dude, she’s probably a Sazae Oni” he replied sarcastically. I didn’t understand his reference, but as his tone implied, it was a snide comment I’d best ignore... but didn’t.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked sharply.

“Sa-zae Oh-ni!” He said louder and slower in syllables, as if it were common knowledge. He continued, “They’re these folk tale snail mermaids that preyed on Japanese pirates. They would pretend to be in distress, but when the pirates brought them onboard, the sazae oni would chop off their balls and hold them ransom for gold. They’re like, obsessed with gold or something.” A weird silence filled the phone line as I looked around the room, waiting for him to finish.

He started again, “ok, it doesn’t matter. You’re the Japanese one, should you know what a sazae oni is?”

I held my lips taught, annoyedly.

“Well, is she someone you’d bring home to meet your mother?” He asked me. I thought about this for a while. I imagined a cartoon caricature version of my mother asking me, “Why would you want to be with someone that is so serious all the time?”

Up until this point I had never even seen the inside of her apartment. Whenever I was to meet her there, she would already be outside the gate waiting for me.

That Saturday night I took a cab to her apartment building as I usually did. It started to rain on the way over and fog grew in density the closer I got to the apartment. I didn’t check the forecast beforehand, and I didn’t have an umbrella. I arrived at the gate and Ji-Woo wasn’t around. I checked my phone for any missed messages from her, but there were none.

I buzzed her intercom. “Hi, I’m here. Are you there?”

“Still getting ready, come up.”

She buzzed me in. This was it, I was finally going to see where(and how!) she lived. 6th Floor, apartment 6F. Embarrassingly, I panted a bit when I got to her floor. I stood on her doormat, it said ‘Welcome’. I was slightly damp, everywhere. I wore an old grey knit sweater. I had washed it so many times the collar was getting tiny holes. Faded blue jeans and shabby sneakers. I checked my casio, 6:00pm exactly. “Yes! Perfect timing” I exclaimed silently as I clenched my fist in victory, then knocked on the door insouciantly. “Come in!”, I could hear Ji-Woo shout from behind the door. I opened the door, slowly. I floated in like an astronaut, opening the hatch to an alien planet. I opened it to a small foyer. There was a modern-looking coat rack which I hung my soggy jacket on. To the right was an inviting, lamp-lit living room. There was one of those long arched floor lamps spilling its light on an Eames Lounge chair. I imagined Ji-woo perched on it, with a warm beverage, reading a dense book. Floor to ceiling bookshelves and floor to ceiling windows lined the rest of the room, I realized it was a top floor corner apartment. Black and white photographs and pen drawings hung on the wall. There were blankets draped on the modern couches. It felt uncharacteristically cozy. The furniture all flowed perfectly, like it was a team of designers’ life’s work.

On the left there was another closet. Then further down, it opened up to the dining room. “In here” She shouted, from that direction.

I kicked off my tattered sneakers and the uppers deflated like popped balloons. I took one step toward the kitchen and I was struck with the most extraordinary smell. It was rich, minerally and spicy. I let my nose lead the way.

She stood at the stove. She was wearing a loose knit navy sweater that was well loved and jeans. Her sleeves were pushed up. She was wearing a nice apron. Her hair was pulled back, not in a braid, but in a perfectly round bun.

The dining table was set for two. Plates, silverware, a wine glass for her and a beer glass for me. There were two candles and a decorative bowl. The bowl was filled with some unknown liquid that looked like molten gold. I wanted to stick my finger in it but didn’t.

She turned and saw me, and I saw her. “I didn’t mean that casual.” she said jokingly. Lately she has been making more and more jokes, but only during our dates. It was comfortable, and usually pretty funny.

“It smells so good, what is it?” I said. I walked into the kitchen and leaned against the counter by the stove. She leaned over and planted a kiss on my lips. I was so surprised that it was over before I could react. There was a battle in my head between the heavenly smelling food and the thought of the kiss.

“It’s almost ready. Get us drinks from the fridge.” She instructed me. The fridge was filled with different sized glass containers. They all stacked neatly, each with a label of what it was and a date. There was a bottle of white wine and a fancy looking beer with today’s date. I took them from the fridge and opened them. She looked as though she were a professional chef. She moved with tempered urgency and precision. “Budae-Jjigae. Budae is ‘army’ or ‘army base’, jjigae is ‘stew’. It’s a recipe my grandmother taught me... a long time ago.” She stopped what she was doing and looked off into space.

A few seconds later, she regained consciousness from her memory and started to plate the food. It was finished.

It was delicious. It was perfect. It was obvious that Ji-Woo had made this dish many times and was able to recreate it perfectly. “How many other romantic interests had she made this for?” I wondered, but quickly spurned the thought. I wasn’t shy, and got a hearty second helping.

I wiped my mouth and leaned back in my chair, and polished off the last of my beer. I wanted badly to unbutton my pants and relieve the pressure on my waistband. Instead, we got up and cleaned the kitchen together.

Later on, we found each other on the sofa near the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I was elated. Warm, with a full belly. Calm, sleepy, but present, I closed my eyes and relished.

“Do not fall asleep.”

Ji-Woo instructed me. “I will be right back.” She said.

Insubordinately, I was falling asleep when from down the hall, I heard her call me, “Come here, I need to show you something.” I sleepily approached the room at the end of the hall. A bedroom. As I got closer to the doorway, I could see a mirror’s reflection in the bedroom. It truly was a bed-room. A queen size mattress and two small side tables with lamps were the only furniture. Warm, golden light spilled out of the bedside lamps that reflected off the polished hardwood floors and floor-to-ceiling mirrors. A single, brand new candle was lit on the nightstand. But there was no lighter or matches anywhere. How was it lit?

Ji-Woo lay on the bed, one leg crossed over the other. Her right arm supported her posture. Her hair was down. It was now I could fully realize the length and volume of her hair. It flowed down her back and fanned out perfectly behind her like a ginkgo leaf. The low lighting in the room accented her dark makeup. Her eyeshadow shimmered subtly.

She was wearing a lacy bodysuit of lingerie so scant, it could hardly be described as clothing. A lacy and delicate fabric choker connected to thin straps perfectly obfuscated her nipples. Ethereal panties suspend a pair of elegant garters. The fabric adhered to her slender, toned body as if it were made custom.

She eyed me fervently,

And I was very awake then.

After it was over I felt euphoric and peaceful,

Unburdened.

I turned over, towards her in bed.

I put my head on her chest.

And I heard nothing.

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amediesrobloxblog · 4 years

Text

LONG READ: Blue and Red Puppet AU: The Beauty and the Beast (JOKERP RELATED)

Hello everyone! Before we begin, I would like to mention this is JokeRP related! This involves my blog ( @shards-and-clouds ) and Florin’s blog ( @rescueteamrp ), which involves her au known as the Blue and Red Puppet AU. Check out her post on the Blue and Red Puppet AU for an understanding of her AU! However, since my AF3 AU was involved with her AU in JokeRP, she brought up a cursed line in a voice call regarding a recent (well, currently recent) fight between Shard and a HEAVILY corrupted Celesteal/Yawgate Puppet.

I went nuts with the AU.

Anyways, enjoy this cursed story!

Trigger Warnings: Manipulation, Forced Eating, (implied) Stockholm Syndrome

Yawgate, a puppet.

Shard, a Savior.

The two were duking it out in the first level of the troposphere, though redone for a battle. Yawgate’s body and outfit changed to have the signature blues and red stripes of Celesteal racing up his body, a sign he was not in control. Black cracks ran across him as well, indicating the corruption was alive and active. Shard was enraged, her hair white and her body showing the brilliant reds and blues of the stripes her Celesteal had given her.

However, she refused to lay a hand on Yawgate. She could not bear to lay harm onto him. Why?

She had viewed her Yawgate as a father figure and she was enraged when Celesteal took the hero’s Yawgate away. She thought she had lost her own father at that point.

But there was no time for such trivial thoughts. She needed to get through to him, but how? She attempted to get close to the puppet that was taunting her in Celesteal’s tone, though the voice was that of Yawgate’s. Reaching out to his head, surely the symbol-shattering that she saw hero Stratosfear do frequently would work.

But it did not.

She would be shocked by this, soon jumping back before the puppet could land a hit onto her.

“Wh..What..?” Shard stammered, staring at her hands. The puppet simply laughed, seeing Shard’s fear.

“Oh, did you think it would be that easy? For me to release a tool?” the puppet asked, though in a taunting manner. Shard would look up to the puppet, wide-eyed and in disbelief. “I would not do such a thing! After all, he always thought of himself as lesser and nothing more than a tool...”

Shard would soon become enraged once more, hating the term “tool” to describe an individual. Cracks would appear in her arms now but would spread into the reality around the two. The puppet would chuckle a bit, easily fixing the cracks in the reality with corruption.

“I really admire your willingness to.. Well... Interrupt my narrative... It’s certainly something I would want...”

“I only interrupt your narrative when you INVOLVE MY WORLD IN IT!”

Shard would try to charge at the puppet again, only to miss the puppet when it jumped above her. Time seemed to slow for Shard as she turned towards the puppet, preparing to strike her. Suddenly, Shard felt a sharp pain in her neck, causing her to gasp, seeing the puppet strike her with the side of their palm. She would tumble down, landing on her side. The puppet would land next to her, grinning, as the world went black.

----

Jolting awake, Shard would sit upright and grip her neck. She would wince when her fingers brush up against a bruise where the puppet had hit her. She would pull her hand back, staring at it until noticing where she had awoken.

The room, though mostly colored in deep grays and blacks, had sparse blues and reds to accent the room itself. Most of the room was filled with ornate and detailed sculpture and decor, and the bed could easily fit four people, yet she was alone. The canopy bed was covered with a light cloth, filtering some of the light out from outside. Shard would remove the comforter off of her, taking in the scene around her. She was a prisoner, right? Why was she being treated like this..?

Shard would crawl over to the edge of the bed, moving the light cloth out of the way to step out. Almost immediately, she was met by two Cherubs, one carrying an ebony wooden tray with a plate of confectionaries, a bowl of assorted berries, tea with the kettle, and a small vase with a rose that was mixed with blue, red, and white. The other Cherub would force Shard to sit down, pinning the light cloth up so it would not dare fall while Shard was eating, while the one carrying the tray would set the tray down in Shard’s lap and force her to eat.

Shard would resist at first but would give up trying to resist when the food entered her mouth. Wonderous flavors would take her by surprise, distracting her from the second Cherub currently brushing her short hair. The Cherubs would be chittering, though Shard would be overwhelmingly distracted by the food. She would only glance up to the Cherub forcibly feeding her when they mentioned her name.

“Shard, you will be meeting Celesteal in the Grand Library,” the Cherub spoke. Their voice was that of a young woman, likely Stormy. Shard would become lightly paler, swallowing what bits of food she had in her mouth at the time.

“We know how uncomfortable you are, but we have no control over our actions... He wants to see you personally, as far as we are aware,” the second Cherub would speak up, placing a six-pronged symbol into the back of her head, soon bringing out extensions to hopefully elongate her hair once again. Shard would be fearful since she would have to personally meet the mastermind behind this, but, oddly, was thankful he did not place her into a dungeon where she wouldn’t be able to see the light of day... or be turned into a puppet.

The first Cherub would take the tray away, seeing as Shard had completed the meal. They would leave the rose and its vase behind, but Shard would soon realize that the first Cherub allowed two other Cherubs to enter. She would be pulled to her feet, soon forced behind a curtain to change into a different outfit.

A dress. One with light airy colors, too, accented with gold. Shard hated the concept, but she didn’t exactly pack a bag for this situation. Reluctantly, she would slip on the dress, hanging her old clothes over the curtain which would be taken away by the two Cherubs, likely to be washed. Or Shard hoped. The cherub that was tending to her hair earlier, being another female, would slip behind the screen with Shard to help get the dress on.

Shard would soon look over to a mirror, seeing the outfit complete. The six-pronged star behind her head made it seem like she was wearing a crown of some kind, and the dress made her seem ethereal, perhaps divine.

Despite her hated for dresses, she actually... Liked this one. Everything was seemingly made for her, down to the size of the dress itself and to the accents. She gently traced one out, which formed the shape of a fluffy cloud. The Cherub that was attending to her would walk up to Shard in the mirror, gently taking her hands.

“Despite this all being his doing, he made sure it was perfect for you...”

Shard would look down a bit, a bit of color appearing in her cheeks.

“..I still don’t know why he’s doing all this... I’m his prisoner, aren’t I?” Shard would question, looking to the Cherub. The cherub would sigh slightly.

“Perhaps he will explain everything in the Grand Library,” the Cherub would respond, much to Shard’s dismay. “But you simply look divine, Shard.”

Shard would murmur thanks, soon stepping out from the curtain. The Cherubs in the room would surround Shard, making sure every detail of her was correct. Shard would let them do their jobs since she might ultimately have to appease Celesteal to get out of here...

‘Sure, he’s done terrible things, but... This feels oddly genuine...’ Shard would think, letting one of the Cherubs do just a bit of makeup on her cheeks. ‘It feels... It feels oddly like a warm hug from him. Just like the soft smile he had when I had freed Ploque...’

Shard would place a gentle hand on her forehead, trying to remove the thought. The Cherubs, now finished with their task, would back off as a Puppet appeared in the doorway. Ulipse, despite having the signature stripes and pale white skin of the Puppets, would have a calmer look to her eyes. Shard would look over to Ulipse, soon spotting the gentle look.

‘It’s that soft look again...’

“Hello, dear Shard. Are you ready to meet me in person?” the Ulipse Puppet would ask, causing Shard to become flustered slightly. Ulipse would hold out a hand, beckoning Shard to come closer. Mostly out of fear of what could happen if she resisted, she would walk to the Puppet, who would take her hand gently to lead her down the black hallways.

-----

The Grand Library. It was certainly grand in scale, as Shard would soon feel quite small compared to how high the ceiling is above her. Celesteal would be next to a large cyan orb, depicting many of the worlds he still controls, staring intently into it. Ulipse would bow, soon leaving Shard and Celesteal alone, their task complete.

Shard would watch Ulipse leave, now knowing she’s at the mercy of Celesteal...

Celesteal, who is completely corrupted, would still be wearing his signature outfit from 300 years prior, though tainted with black in some areas. He would turn to face the Savior, a soft smile appearing.

“Ah, dearest Shard... Lovely to see you here.”

Those lines would cause Shard to become flustered once more. Celesteal would chuckle, walking up to her, and gently taking her hands. Shard would look up to Celesteal, who would meet hers.

“I..”

“Wondering why I did not... End you? I had the perfect opportunity to let you sleep indefinitely... Well, Shard..” Celesteal paused, bringing up one of her hands to gently kiss it. “I would say that I was wrong about you. I had dismissed you as nothing more than just a side character, but once you revealed those brilliant stripes... I was stunned, to say the least.”

Shard would become flustered again, seeing not only his gentle gaze but his calm, non-insane tone in his voice. He was being genuine in front of her!

“Be my Queen, Shard.”

These words would catch Shard off guard.

“W-What?” she would stammer, not completely believing these words. Him? Wanting HER to be his Queen?! Nothing seemed to add up. And what of the puppets and her friends?! Celesteal would chuckle, seeing the fear and unwillingness in her eyes.

“Oh, don’t worry, my dear...”

“I’m not worried about you...”

“Then what are you worried about, Shard?”

Shard would look down but would look back up to Celesteal. She would take her hands out of his hands, keeping her hands close to her body.

“The others. The Points you’ve decided to strip free will from, the rescue team... My world! I don’t think I can ever your queen if they are not left alone!”

Shard would turn around, trying to keep her emotions inside of her. Celesteal’s smile would waver.

“Especially Yawgate...”

Celesteal would sigh, smiling once more.

“Oh, so it’s a deal you want? Well... I promise to free them all and to leave them all alone... If you become my Queen.”

Shard would widen her eyes but would look away when Celesteal walked up to her and held out his hand for her to take. She now had to decide what to do.

From the perspective of Shard, she knew all the horrid things this Celesteal had done: revive himself with corruption, puppet the points who had been unable to shatter their symbols, turn the second savior into Verfection with a ruined memory, hunt down the post-points, trick her into giving him a viewpoint into how Stratosfear can shatter symbols, abduct Iruelien for more corruption, abduct Yawgate and turn him into a puppet... And now abducting her. Yet, for some reason, treating her nicely since she is, by all logical means, Celesteal reborn proper.

Truth be told, Shard wanted to deny this but knowing how she doesn’t want anyone to be harmed and that she has, so far, been treated like a Queen in her own right appealed to her. Her Savior self wanted to save them all, but everything pointed to not believe him. But, why would he have the friendliest tone towards her if it was not genuine? Shard would become flustered again. Maybe she can be a Savior of something more than a shattering reality...

All these thoughts ran through her mind. She feared what would happen if she denied him, being a far more capable reality-bender than her. She would turn to Celesteal, soon raising a hand to his, and gently placing it upon his.

Celesteal would smile, placing his thumb on top of hers, sealing the deal. Shard looks up to Celesteal, soon smiling with a faint blush dusting her cheeks now.

“My Sharp Queen, Shard.”

“My Radiant King, Celesteal.”

#longpost #jokerp related #jokerp au #blame florin for the quote 'be my queen shard'#tw: manipulation #tw: forced eating #tw: stockholm syndrome

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mostloquacious-moved · 4 years

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“what type of bender are you” quiz

tagged by: no one i did this on my own volition tagging: you there!!

AIRBENDER.

the elements speak greatly to how you approach conflict, inner turmoil, etc, so now how do we define what your element actually says about you?? waterbenders value community. earthbenders crave stability. firebenders are made of willpower. so what about airbenders?? airbenders want nothing other than freedom. the freedom to express, to choose, to love, to breathe, to exist, to be. it’s quite simple, really. an airbender will do anything to be free, to exist as they wish to exist without conflict. for this, you’ll find many incredibly understanding individuals within this particular element and you are likely one of the many. somebody who respects the opinion and choice of another person because as an airbender, you place so much value in freedom. generally, these benders work with life rather than against it, using the wind currents to guide them across the sky. of course, this means airbenders are naturals at avoiding conflict. they don’t enjoy it and they will do anything to keep fights from happening. this isn’t to say they’re never angry or that their emotions never get the better of them. airbenders are still human after all; they have needs, things they need to get out like any other element as they’re unavoidable, but they’ll always consider alternative methods that won’t cause a fight. notably, it’s not uncommon amongst airbenders to be quite skilled when it comes to personal responsibility. their actions are their actions and they know this. what i mean is that they are much like earthbenders in some respects. where earthbenders will stifle their own wants to maintain order, airbenders are likely to lie or quiet themselves in favour of maintaining peace and this doesn’t feel unnatural or wrong for them to do. it helps that they’re also known for letting go of negative emotion easily once the immediate moment has passed. it’d take something truly painful for an airbender to hold a grudge. aang is a prime example. he wants conflict to be resolved quickly with the least amount of damage done. when faced with two warring tribes, he creates an elaborate lie that completely ceases the argument they were having. even when dealing with the genocide of his people, he never goes so far as to blame everyone in the fire nation. he feels his immediate anger and then chooses to instead honour and maintain the legacy of his people. just to be clear, an airbender isn’t incapable of defending themselves or will simply never enter a fight. they absolutely are capable and can fight. when backed into a corner, when there’s no other option, many airbenders will defend themselves, but it’s only as a means of protection—whether they’re protecting themselves or protecting another person. it’s a matter of necessity. just because they prefer to avoid conflict doesn’t mean they’re less fierce or dangerous than the other elements. consider monk gyatso for a moment and the haunting image of his skeleton surrounded by dozens of other skeletons. or even yangchen. the words she imparts to aang also speak of operating on necessity, of sacrificing her spiritual needs in favour of selfless duty. she was the avatar. she needed to be proactive. airbenders will do what needs to be done when there is no other choice, but truthfully, it’s probably best for all of us to never push an airbender so far. now, as said before, freedom—whether it’s personal or worldly freedom—is the most important thing to an airbender and without it, they can feel bogged down or like they’re being suffocated by everything around them. i like to call these caged airbenders. without the freedom to choose, to be who they are, these benders will lash out and it won’t be pretty—especially when they aren’t naturally inclined to conflict. when airbenders are angry, boy, are they angry and they will go to any lengths in order to feel like themselves again, to feel like they have a choice. consider, again, aang as an example. when it’s revealed he’s the avatar, his entire life changes. the people he called his friends at the air temples started to treat him differently, his teachers—aside from gyatso—became much stricter, and they tried to forcibly separate him from the only person who still treated him like aang the child rather than aang the avatar. out of desperation, because he feels like he’s being suffocated and forced to be something aside from himself, aang runs away. when weighed down by expectation and when they’ve finally had enough, airbenders push back like strong winds and transform into destructive tornadoes in their attempts to regain their freedom. this isn’t to say every caged airbender will turn self-destructive, but their actions in retaliation will most likely be thoughtless and desperate. they simply do so because they feel they must without thinking about the consequences of their actions. in the end, airbenders understand that what really matters is the freedom to choose. without this, they feel like they can’t breathe. this is partly why aang struggles so much as sozin’s comet gets closer. the idea that he must kill ozai removes any autonomy he has over the matter and also greatly contradicts the values taught to him by his old teachers--the ones he swore to uphold in light of their genocide. as any airbender would, he exercises any possible option and you, as an Airbender, are most likely the same. air exists all around us. imagine if it suddenly decided when and where we breathe?? it’d be impossible to live. without freedom, an airbender knows it’d be just the same, just as impossible. so, as the wind shifts direction, you know there’s always another way. there’s always another choice to make and you want the freedom to do so. you just want to breathe.

#*takes a deep breath* *yells*#█ ❝ ɪ'ᴍ ᴊᴜsᴛ ᴀ ᴄᴏʀᴘsᴇ ᴡʜᴏ ᴡᴀɴᴛs ɴᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ. ( about. )

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cassyblue · 5 years

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☕ seven of nine (god if I got the numbers wrong I'll die bc I am too lazy to google it)

good news you got it right otherwise i would have texted you and been like, giselle, GISELLE.

Ok so this is going to be kinda long because there are three points I am going to touch on: The way that Seven of Nine’s agency is depicted, The dynamic between Seven of Nine and Janeway, and Finally the romance written for seven of nine.

1) Agency

Seven of Nine was assimilated in the borg collective when she was around 8 or 9. By the time that Voyager finds her, she is in her 20s. She has been in the collected for pretty much all her life. She is used as an representative for the borg queen when the crew of Voyager encounter her. Uh I think that’s right, The last time I watched voyager was in 2016.

The Voyager crew, particularly Janeway, decide to rescue her from the borg collective without her say in the matter because you know she’s assimilated by the borg so surely she has no agency. Which is pretty much the same thing essentially since she is not given the choice by the crew of Voyager to join them or stay with the borg. There is this focus on Seven reclaiming her humanity which I honestly fucking hate.

So basically, the Crew of Voyager separates her from the collective and basically figures out how to deborg her which they do. All this time, in the brig Seven is begging for them not to do it because it hurts her. It is essentially torture for her to be unassimulated. It could kill her. But despite Seven’s cries of pain and begging for it to stop and for them to let her go, Janeway refuses. This is painted as some heroic act of saving this girl from the horrible horrible borg and teaching her to regain her humanity and culture. But it’s not that. It’s literally conversion therapy.

They remove most of Seven of Nine’s external nonorganic parts and the only things they leave is literally the hand veins, the thing on the side of her face. Not only that but they put her in a cat suit that’s supposed to mimc the borg nonorganic parts that were removed so that Seven doesn’t get sick? This choice honestly can be blamed on Rick Berman because everything is LITERALLY his fault. Seven wasn’t given any choice of clothing to wear regularly basically. They completely take bodily agency from her in choosing how she presents physically.

Seven is treated as a child in many occasions because she is learning to be human again. Despite the fact she is human and a capable being. It’s infuriating that they are basically trying to recondition her.

Did the borg do wrong? Yes, they forcibly assimulated Seven of Nine as a child. Did the crew of Voyager do wrong? Abso-Fucking-lutely. Neither groups fucking gave Seven agency over her body. The two episode arc was so upsetting that I cried during it because it was horrid and disgusting the way the writers treated the matter.

2) Seven of Nine and Janeway dynamics

Seven/Janeway shippers you are not going to like my thots in this section. One, I know that Seven of Nine and Janeway was an huge ship when the show was running and fans were lobbying the writers and RICK BERMAN THE EVIL for it to happen because you know in DS9 there was the girl kiss in reunion. But yeaaaah Rick Berman being the giant piece of poop from a dumpster he is, was like nope never happening. So that’s the context. It remains a popular ship.

So here’s the thing. There is a huge power imbalance between Janeway and Seven that makes the ship really squicky for me. As you see above in the agency section, Janeway REFUSES to listen to Seven when she’s literally crying and sobbing and asking for them to stop the process. Janeway is so focused on this idea of saving this girl instead of fucking listening to the girl. Furthermore Janeway takes on this teacher / mother role for Seven. She gives Seven lessons on how to regain humanity. She is always acting as a guide or older more experienced source that knows best even if it is not the best for Seven. Seven quite honestly was her most vulnerable after the deborging and Janeway stepped in the teacher/mother role. Seven also turns to Janeway for emotional support which completely baffles me. Like this is the thing, I literally do not understand how Janeway and Seven have this positive relationship dynamic. Janeway literally ripped Seven away from her family and her life. It just ugh bad WRITING.

3)Seven of Nine and Romance

Seven of Nine is probably one of the MOST sexualized star trek characters. The costume required Jerri Ryan to not only wear a skin tight suit, but also a corset (badly made at that), and stilletos. The costume took some time to get into and it caused Jerri Ryan back pain (because the corset was TOO TIGHT. They normally do not if they are probably fitted). This once again Rick Berman’s fault.

So first off we have the emh doctor being incredibly creepy to Seven of Nine because he has romantic hots for her. Seven has to tell him she only wants a friend but he doesn’t stop being creepy until a big fight between them. So That romance subplot sure doesn’t make any sense.

Then there were the special borgs that could maintain individuality outside of the collective, there was one that Seven had a crush on. Honestly that part really wasn’t that badly written.

Then the fucking final straw, the complete out of the blue, no previous writing support, pairing of Seven of Nine and Chakotay. Backgroun, Chakotay was Janeway’s love interest for the first couple seasons and it was quite good chemistry until I guess the writers just completely dropped it. And then the lobbying of the Seven/Janeway shippers got really intense toward the end of the show so you know what happened? Seven suddenly gets shoved with Chakotay which is the most what the FUCK out of all characters. Seven had never viewed Chakotay as an romantic interest or anything beyound colleague until the second to last episode of voyager when she starts to have like fantasies about him and turns out he is into her which like was never written in any of the other plots. It just was like WHAT THE FUCK where did this come from. Answer: Rick Berman cockblocking the femslashers. It was a bad decision and honestly made the finale arc disappointing. Like Star Trek ending arcs tend to be lackluster (don’t @ me tng, tos, and VOY fans). DS9 was probably the most decent one because at least it had followed the previously established relationships instead of bringing this out of the fuckin blue.

So tdlr: Seven of Nine’s character was treated pretty crappy despite all the interesting angles that could have been pursued. I am hoping that the writer’s Star Trek Picard treat her character better, which may be a really good possibility since Patrick Stewart was heavily involved in the story writing. Historically he has stood up for his female colleagues when they had to deal with sexism from the producers (RICK BERMAN). However, If I hear Seven of Nine utter, “My husband Chakotay” I will literally drive to Rick Berman’s house and egg and tp it.

Anyways I also have lots of parallels that can be talked about Seven of Nine, Breq, and Murderbot but I already probably wrote like a thousnad words at this point and its midnight and i have early morning work tomorrow.

#asks #long post #sorry i have many a thot

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hollandroos · 5 years

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Everything that left with you | Tom Holland series, chapter 1

Summary: When you lose someone, it can feel like you lose yourself too and while you may not want it, sometimes you need someone who understands to bring you back.

Written with the wonderful @neptuneparker

Words: 2746

Warnings (IMPORTANT, PLEASE READ): this fic focuses around a homicide support group and deals with things such as murder, kidnappings (in flashbacks and mentioned throughout) and mental illness and trauma. PLEASE do not read if this will trigger you in any way. it is a little darker then what is usually posted on here so please BE AWARE.

Disclaimer: This is NOT a romance fic and there will be no romance between Tom and the reader.

Once again, PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS BEFORE YOU READ THIS SERIES!

The circle was more full than normal, Y/N noted as she sat in the rickety folding chair with a bland cup of lukewarm coffee. There was a new face sitting two chairs away from her, he looked shy and sullen and no one made a move to talk to him– but then again, not many people spoke here.

Wendy was the leader of the group, she was spunky and had never lost someone the way everyone else did. Y/N had envied her, she seemed happy, she hated seeing people happy and even more, she hated opening up to people that could never experience the level of pain she felt on a day to day basis. She’d utter a few words about how she felt on that day and Wendy would give her a small smile, telling her that she was improving when in reality, improvement had halted long ago.

“Who would like to start us off today?” Wendy asked, rubbing her hands together as people sat in the circle. It was silent, people never wanted to speak first at these meetings, they all knew what the other was thinking without even having to speak. It wasn’t that hard to.

“I will.” Y/N spoke, it was the first time she had talked to the majority of these individuals, she was typically silent at the meetings, fingers tapping against a flask of cold coffee as others spoke but never her. She cleared her throat and began her cynical telling. “I’m Y/N, twenty-three, and when I was fifteen a man broke into my house and killed my older brother while I hid in the closet. You’ve all been waiting to hear that one right?” She spoke curtly, her face void of emotion as the rest of the group stayed silent.

The new man two seats over watched her with a haze in his eyes, one that never seemed to leave. It was rare that he ever showed any emotion since that incident and the only time he ever did it was pure sadness- and guilt, definitely guilt. The circle is still silent and Y/N lets out a breath, waiting for someone else to speak as her words linger seamlessly in the air.

It wasn’t that they were shocked by her experience because they each had their own, rather chilling story to tell. Each horrifically different. Y/N’s was just one more thrown into a void of plenty. At least that’s what she felt.

He gives the girl a side glance, coughing as he leans forward in his seat. “I’m Tom, twenty-eight. My six-year-old daughter was taken from her bedroom and the police found her body facedown in the woods three weeks later.”

He ignored the restriction in his arms as the jacket he wore hugged his biceps when he leaned forward, prefering to stare at the ground for an awkward moment.

There was a hush over the small group of people, they all looked to the ground, except for her. Y/N looked straight into Tom’s eyes, recognizing the same feeling she had deep inside of her, noticing the guilt laying underneath the sheen of tears.

“We went to the park that day. The police said that’s likely where he chose her. Chose her, like she was a toy or a pair of fucking jeans.” He hated talking about it, he could never keep his anger inside, the anger he had for the world for not being able to find the person who took away his pride and joy.

She listened to every harsh word with crossed arms and a stone cold face but she felt them, she really did. Because she wouldn’t forget the sight of her own brother coated in his blood—the crimson red sticking to the walls and running across the carpet. It was an experience she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. “He was older than me, seventeen at the time and we were watching Christmas movies when the other guy burst into the house.” She mutters. “It hurts a lot, and it never stops. It never fucking stops hurting, right?”

Tom had never witnessed anyone who felt his pain before, never had he met another who could compare to what he felt that day and everyday after. Nobody had experienced their heart being forcibly removed from their chest at the arms of another, someone else’s choices to take their loved one from this life. He clenched his jaw, seeing the slight pain on her face as she spoke about her encounter, it was hidden, but it was there.

And while he sat in a room full of people that likely felt every ounce of pain that he experienced from losing his little girl, he still felt lonely. So fucking lonely– but for a moment he had her. The girl with the darkest eyes– not physically but he could see so much pain hidden behind them, and the dark circles that could run for miles.

“I hid in the closet and watched and the man took my mother’s jewellery and left.” She paused, looking down at her fingers. “I wish he opened the closet door to find me.”

“Y/N, Tom.” The leader coughed awkwardly, welcoming her newest. It wasn’t Y/N of course, she’d been coming here for years but Tom was new—despite the accident occurring years ago. “I’m glad you’re... bonding.” Y/N shook her head sarcastically and Tom noticed, fiddling with his fingers. “I’m glad to be here.”

It was sarcasm, nothing more. Because if his daughter wasn’t killed then he wouldn’t have to be here in the first place and if her brother hadn’t been murdered, then she’d be at home right now, decorating for Christmas. Now she hated Christmas.

If he hadn’t taken that life, the life of her loved one then she wouldn’t be up at all hours of the night because every time she closed her eyes she was back in that closet, a hand place securely over her mouth as warm tears ran down her scolding cheeks. She wouldn’t hear those piercing screams and then utter silence then the boots– the heavy thudding that possessed her nightmares as he stepped around the closet. Her eyes held many sleepless nights and if you looked really closely, you could see every memory suppressed.

And if this daughter hadn’t been torn from his grasp at such a young, ripe age then he would still be able to put even the slightest bit of trust into people. He wouldn’t have to watch the barista that he used to talk to daily make his coffee with piercing eyes and one hand over the counter, maybe he’d still help the little old lady next door bring her groceries into the house every Sunday. Tom used to trust way too fucking hard and it cost him more then he had ever expected.

And now, now every time he closed his fucking eyes he thinks about how scared his little girl must have been, what her screams might have been like, the look in her eyes when he took her, and the numerous calls out for Tom that were never answered.

They were all damaged, utterly fucked and riddled with guilt and nightmares and the inability to trust and simply want to give love.

Wendy plastered an over joyful smile on her face and glances towards one of the other support group members– Billy, a thirty-something year old that talked a little more then he should’ve if he was invited to.

“Shall we carry on then?”

“Tomorrow will be the eighth year since my mom…” The stories of the other members faded to the background as Y/N stared toward the sullen father. She could tell that there was something he wasn’t talking about, there was resentment behind his story, and more anguish than most she had encountered.

Tom didn’t look at the rest of the group, he stared at the brown and black carpet, a ringing present in his ears, it was just like that day they found Paisley. The carpet was as dark as the soil he walked over, his boot indenting the rich earth. It had just rained and Tom couldn’t help but wonder if she got to see it before her life was taken from her.

“See you all next week. There are more coffee and cookies over at the tables. Stay safe.” Wendy said, interrupting Tom’s intrusive thoughts. The circle dispersed and most of the individuals walked out of the recreation center’s doors, not wanting to be surrounded by the cloud of depression and self-pity that they had to endure week after week. Tom didn’t want to be alone, though, he wanted to be around people like him, who understood him, for as long as possible.

Tom stirred cream into his coffee, the dark liquid flowering lighter than before, Paisley loved watching that. The coffee was cold, but he didn’t care, he wasn’t even going to drink it, he just wanted to hold it to make it seem like he had some reason, some purpose for staying back longer with the rest of them.

“That was one hell of a story.” Y/N commented, picking at the few cookies left on the purple plastic platter.

“You too.” He said softly, looking up at her for a second before looking back down at his constantly stirring coffee. “Sorry about your brother.”

She shrugged at his comment, letting out a breathy chuckle before breaking off a piece of a cookie. “You don’t have to be. You didn’t kill him.”

“I still can be, I’m human.” Tom said back to her, looking down at his feet. They were pointing toward the door, eager to leave and be home by himself, wallowing in his own self-pity like he did every other day.

She looked up at him for one of the first times since the meeting ended. His curls hung in front of his forehead, he looked like he hadn’t had a haircut in months—and he hadn’t. Tom barely took care of himself since he found his daughter.

“Could’a fooled me.” She joked, unable to be vulnerable for too long. This was the first time that she was able to talk about what happened that night, she never wanted to mention it to anyone. She didn’t want people telling her that they were sorry for her, it was her biggest pet peeve.

Both of them held little emotions. This was probably the hardest day of the week for both of them. It was where you’d have to open up, actually reach out and talk about things that you preferred to keep hidden in the darkest parts of your mind.

Tom didn’t want to forget Paisley and her little pink gumboots or her adoration for hot chocolate with marshmallows overflowing the top of the mug and Max and Ruby. He didn’t want to forget the way her giggles bounced off of the walls or the sound of her feet pandering down the hallway at half past eleven at night. He never wanted to forget the way she ran around without clothes on after her bath when she was just a baby, babbles leaving her mouth as he ran after her.

But he wanted to forget what it felt like to walk into her room that day– to find books and toys turned upside down and the window wide open, rain and wind smashing against the blinds. To this day he could still feel his heart pounding in his chest as he looked around the room, he hadn’t even heard anything from the kitchen.

“Paisley! Sweetheart? Where are you?” He yelled, his own voice sounded foreign to him as it rang in his own ears and through the empty room. Normally her giggle would erupt from the closet or from under the bed but it was silent. “Fuck oh fuck..” he spoke softly, seeing her rain boots by the window, one knocked over on its side. He knew she would have put her boots on if she left, but she wouldn’t have left without telling him, even if he had yelled at her just before that—she knew he loved her, right? Tom was short of breath, his hands shaking before the mug of hot chocolate slipped from his hand, shattering on the ground—marshmallows rolling on the hardwood floors, the brown liquid bleeding through the open Berenstain Bears books on the floor, her favorites.

The thoughts filled his mind constantly, never once did he stop thinking about her. He hadn’t spoken to anyone outside of his family in the last seven months, for the last person to speak to him was the funerary director when giving him the bill for burying his six-year-old. The pain of outliving your own child is indescribable, so why talk about it?

“You gonna come here every week?” Y/N asked, pulling Tom away from his spiraling thoughts. He gulped, shrugging his shoulders. Tom knew it was good to come back, his mother begged him week after week to just try it—she couldn’t stand to see her son like this any longer once he stopped seeing his therapist.

She had described him of a shell of the man he used to be and while his mother had been supportive, by his side through everything, Tom no longer appreciated her attempts to heal him.

He hated that word- Heal. Tom believed that he would never heal and refused to give himself false hope.

The older women had lived with him for a few months after Paisleys passing but she didn’t need to live with him anymore to know that he was refusing to sleep, living straight on coffee and canned soup and if he did sleep on the odd day- it was after crying himself to sleep and torturing himself with thoughts of the child before her taking.

“Gonna try.” He spoke curtly, not wanting to be any more vulnerable than he already had that day. “I suck at keeping to routines though, they just don’t seem to stick. I’m more of a spur of the moment kinda guy.” Tom finishes.

Paisley hated that about her father. He sucked with routines and they often made him late to pick her up from dance or school. It meant that they would sometimes have dinner at four pm and sometimes at eight. Still, she’d have herself in bed by at least eight thirty pm exactly every single night.

“Well if you do decide to come every week at least you’ve got a friend here.” Y/N secretly hoped that the stranger would come back. She hadn’t seemed to click with any of the others yet and while she hadn’t clicked with Tom, she wanted to at least make an effort with this one. His story broke her heart but he didn’t search for pity.

Tom glances at the girl, seeing a small but barely there smile tug at her lips. The lukewarm support group coffee left a film on his teeth, it felt as he did, there was an extra layer between his teeth and the air—an extra layer between him and the rest of the world. His mother joked once that coffee was just as bitter as him. But before Paisley had died, Tom prefered his coffee sweet with extra sugar. Every sip would make him smile but now every sip of his coffee, bitter as could be made him screw his face up. He felt that it was all he deserved.

“I’ll think about it.” He decides, mind already caught up on other things.

Positive posters lined the walls, decorated with quotes and sayings he deemed bullshit. You had chuckled at them once too, drawing a mustache on one of the men that spoke lies about putting yourself first and all that crap. What did that even mean? Maybe putting herself first was shoving herself in that closet.

But maybe that was all bullshit, maybe this whole support group was all bullshit, a way for people to feel like they’re being heard when nothing about their stories mattered to anyone else. Maybe, just maybe she’d realize the lies she’s been fed for years after attending these meetings but she kept showing up for someone to come who understood her. Someone who understood that no, not everything is going to be okay, and as she watched Tom walk out of the recreation center building, she knew it was him.

Please remember to reblog or send me an ask telling me what you thought of this - it took us months to get right and we would appreciate some thoughts :-)

Everything tags: @cosmetologynerd @holland-ish @smexylemony @thewiseandfree @zendayacolemen @dej-okay @hollandsletters @ive-got-some-lies-to-tell @liz-gayllen @marvelismylifffe @lovelyh0lland @tomhollandandmarvelsworld @woah-jess @southsidefandoms @justannothermonday @its-claire-louise @sophiatomlinson23 @mockingjaygirl1221 @joyfullyjenny @damnhisfaceisliketheskyatnight @bride-of-loki-odinson @in-the-corner-coffee-please @futuremrsb-r-main @spideyyypeter @saturn-aka-six @c0prolalia @buckykinz @ashtonsbandannas @dennasaur @amyyleblanc1999 @fnosidam @randomfangirl1701@maybeandperhaps @acciorinn @marvel-language @micki-smiles @justmesadgirl @converseskyline @niall2017 @gavemylifetotomholland @tomuchmarvel @leslieandjensen @painted-soulss @practicallylivesonline @mischiefmanaged49 @its-the-unknownspidey @holyrose96 @for-my-mind @mlxbm @erindillon11 @captainbuckyy @shawnandhisroses @converseskyline @smitten0-0kitten @parkeroos @whileinparis @unicornio-vomita-mierdas @draqcnheartstrinq @rainyboo-posts @mikalaka @petxrpxrker @tony-starks-ego @thedaydreamingwriter @peter-quackson @kateelyse96 @lesbian-jesus-jr @wheresmyquill @elyshugh @hollanderheart @tomshufflepuff @marvelismylifffe @tomsh0lland @obsessed-fandoms @girl-in-the-chair @trashqueenbitch @dramatic-and-young @honey-honey-5644 @parkerluvs @chingonaconcha @captainbuckyy @jes-sica1 @tomsfireheart @Rainbow-marvel @spideysimpossiblegirl @spideys-gurl @thomasstanley-holland @mlxbm @ixchel-9275 @parkerssweb @peter-parkersbb @tom-hollands-eyelash @starlightfound @vldlvj @paradoxparker @lustfulcry @mlxbm @musiclover1263 @justatheatredork @peterparkerscamera @fandomnerdsarecool @thequeensardine @cutesy-angst @httplayer @mischiefmanaged49 @loca-lola @softboyparkerr @desir-ae @dangerousluv1 @t-hotland @laucontrerasv @peter-parkersbb @whatdafricklefrackle @thatblondebelgiangirl @fairydustparker @they-call-me-le @jamiemac26 @nephalem67 @underoos-tom @quaxon-holland @lovelyspidey @no-shxt-sherl @xlatinaaxx @starlightfound @mikexpeter @moonandstars-xo @httpmcrvel @evelyn120700 @fromheroestodust @hollandfieldblurbs @ghostlypandacolorpersona @spazclaiire @curlyhairedparker @josierosie @unicornio-vomita-mierdas @icondy @euphoricholland @desir-ae @lovelyspidey @thelazypangolin @ameeravioli @ramen-tically @mellifluous-tom @mrs-webslinger @krazykiara @scottyisthatyou @@s0cial-retard @sithskywalkers

#tom holland #tom holland au #tom holland series #Tom Holland fanfic #tom holland fanfiction #Tom Holland imagines #tom holland imagine #Tom Holland x reader #Tom Holland angst #Tom Holland Oneshot #dad!tom #dad!tom holland #everything that left with you fic

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ofstarsandskies · 5 years

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Relationship Analyses || Star and Milla

As per @unborderedreflection‘s suggestion, the next subject of my Relationship Analyses is Star and Milla!

This one will be organized into Main Chapters of Xillia 2 (I.E. Chapter 8-9) as Star’s feelings do shift across the chapters, but not across every individual chapter. It’s also assumed all the Milla Character Episodes, including the Prime Milla ones, did happen in their respective places. With that, let’s get this party boat moving!

Chapter 7 -- First Meeting Star doesn’t really know how to feel about Milla while in the Fractured Dimension she’s from. By this point Star hasn’t been “trained” to emotionally remove himself from FD residents, but he does have Julius breathing down his neck who’s pretty incessant on “this is an FD, do not make the mistake of sympathizing. It will all disappear in the end”. But despite his brother’s pressure, he doesn’t adopt that mentality and makes the “mistake” of sympathizing with her when she sees her conflict with Fractured!Muzet. So much so that when Milla’s freaking out, Julius has to step in and get punched in the face in his stead. Sorry Nii-san he still loves you.

Once things settle down, although Milla is kind of harsh with him (with justification because RIP Milla’s world), Star does want to try and extend a branch to her so although he can’t fix what he’s done to her, he can try to make her feel welcome in what’s to be her new home from now on. Because if she can connect with him, the person she has a right to despise most, Milla has the chance to connect with others who’ll also make her happy.

Chapter 8 & 9 -- Bridging the Gap To say Milla’s frequent ego checks don’t affect Star at all would be a lie; at times he feels like he can’t even breathe in the same room as Milla without her disapproval. But even if she sometimes hurts his feelings (and also finally gets to punch him in the face at the Lava Caves), Star’s determination to connect with her as friends doesn’t grow weaker; if anything, it grows stronger thanks to the comparisons both the party and Milla herself make to the Prime Milla obviously demoralizing her.

It seems to work to some degree; though Milla does still bully him like at the aforementioned Lava Caves, Star gets the sense it’s not out of pure spite for him. He figures that she’s just not very good at sharing how she really feels and insults to divert away from her feelings is simply her go-to “abort mission” button. And Star knows the struggle of letting people know how you feel; he’s not really used to talking about his feelings to anyone who isn’t his big brother. The two of them may even relate on this level as Milla says F!Muzet was once kind to her, so her sister may have been the only person she shared her feelings with before meeting the party.

Chapter 10 -- It’s My Fault Star’s earlier assumption that Milla may not get subtle emotions is confirmed when Milla teases Elle about being afraid of thunder.. He knows Milla has come to like Elle very much, so her tone deaf attempts to comfort her does connect the dots he’d assumed up to this point. But there is something with Milla that begins to bother him now-- the “Ain’t Prime Milla just a pickled peach?” moments.

When Milla starts getting snippy with Leia about Spyrites, the “I wouldn’t know because I’m not her” actually does upset him because it’s a huge non-sequitur: a valid response would’ve been, “I wouldn’t know because I’ve never met her”, but she instead takes this time to steer the conversation into a self-deprecation because of her own mouthing off. To him this is a sign that these “I’m not Prime Milla” statements has long since twisted from reminders she’s not the same person so the comparisons are 0/10s to a ploy to cut herself down. His question of, “Would you want to meet the other Milla?” is his subtle way of trying to remind Milla that the fact they can meet each other means they are two separate people; you can’t “meet” yourself after all.

Fast forward to the 2nd Lulu Debacle, in other words Star’s fears realized. Because now the laws of the Prime Dimension have reinforced the idea that anything that’s considered two of the “same person” will force one of these beings out forcibly, and isn’t it just-so-convenient that out of odd specificity the Prime Milla hasn’t returned from the void? It’s basically a fully filled gasoline can to reignite the “I’m not Prime Milla” fire he’s been trying to put out, and he isn’t so daft to figure Milla herself won’t weaponize this against herself.

And the worst part of it is? He’s the one to ignite this yet again; he brought Milla with him to this dimension and made the mistake of bringing Fractured Lulu back with them. If he’d told her to stay behind, this could’ve been swept under the rug. Alas, as Milla herself has said, no use in having regrets over past actions. So Star tries to focus on the mission he’s had since the beginning: bridge the gap. If he can’t repair the comparisons, he can still create a relationship. At least that isn’t contingent on the debate.

Chapter 11 -- The Milla I Know And so Star’s earlier grim prediction came true-- Milla weaponizes the lesson from the two Lulus. But not only does she do that, she goes beyond what he expected and tries to justify killing her as an actual decision. How to fix this becomes a literal scramble; what can he say to convey to Milla that no matter the walls she puts up, the lies that deep down he wants to get rid of her, she means something to not just Elle, but him too?

An opportunity does come: as Milla laments how she’s a failed Lord of Spirits, Star reminds her that Elle cares about her, no strings attached. Milla pins this on Julius and Star says, “He did. And Nii-san also taught me to love and protect those I care about-- am I doing a good job so far?” Of course he knows he won’t get a straight answer, but the tiny smile as she dismisses him gives him hope his feelings reached her. Too bad he never truly gets to know the answer as Milla falls into the abyss.

Chapter 12-15 -- She Was Right Ironically, Milla might have dodged several bullets having died when she did. Because if she were still around, not only would she possibly have died by Star’s hand instead in Chapter 15, but she’d also witness Star’s descent into madness.

By Chapter 14, Star has deteriorated so far that the prompt to go save Elle after Vera blocks Milla and Jude at the gate, he dismisses the call. Because now, he thinks to himself, “Nothing good will come from me continuing onward. I won’t find happiness moving forward-- but if I stop, nothing can hurt me. I can’t ruin anything else if I just stop.” But thought he does go with Jude and Milla in the end, his resolve is flimsy at best. So when moving forward requires killing his brother, it’s done. He’s done. His friends can try and drag him to Marksburg all day; he’s not budging.

Though you may say that they do actually get Star to come in the end: unfortunately for them, it was a fatal mistake. Literally. “You’ve all already taken everything from me. My life. Milla. Elle. It stops here. You won’t take Julius from me!!” And so Star kills them all, both to protect Julius and as vengeance for letting him meet and then promptly “taking away” the first people he’s considered close to him outside of Julius.

It’s only until he holds his dying brother in his arms that Star realizes his vengeance was a mistake too. He’s let those same precious people he took revenge for down: Milla wanted him to protect Elle, Elle wanted him to come save her despite saying otherwise, and he can’t act upon either of those wishes. Even if he used himself as the Bridge, Julius wasn’t in a condition to right his wrongs.

Milla had him pegged right from the beginning. He is awful. He ruined her and Elle’s lives for nothing. His excuse of “I had to do it” is gone because he never saw his cause to its end. All he has left is Julius, and even he’s going to die soon. When Julius is gone, what’s the point in living anymore? If someone tries to kill me, I should let them. I deserve to die.

Extra: Prime Milla Star doesn’t place the blame of Milla’s death on Prime Milla; she was cast into the void after confronting Chronos (who is a huge dick), she didn’t demand Rideaux summon her, and she didn’t ask that Milla be sacrificed for her to come back to the Prime Dimension. He also has no problem calling Prime Milla “Milla” as he considers it like having two friends with the same name-- the fact they’re the “Prime” and “Fractured” versions of one another is a non-entity.

In terms of his feelings towards Prime Milla, Star doesn’t hold any ill will towards her and appreciates that she makes the effort to honor the woman who gave up her existence for her and her attempts to both understand him and Elle as people when she’s never really met them in person until just recently. So funnily, her desire to be on his level actually does make Star feel closer to her than he does most of the party; one person does supersede her (excluding F!Milla naturally).

#unborderedreflection #d;; Relationship Analyses #v;; Malejaco Uczucia #v;; Winnego Morderca #[Admittedly this did partially turn into explaining Star's mental state lol]#[But it was relevant so I kept it.]

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deeperforme · 6 years

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Reviews of Five Hypnosis Books You Can Buy for Kindle (+ Douche-O-Meter)

I wrote this a few years ago on my blog, reposting because @ragezdasta asked about some of these books and because I’m proud of this effortful writing, from when I was living among the mountains of Italy with no IRL access to hypnotic community. Luckily my life is very different now! But glad I did the reading (I also reviewed Mind Play, Look Into My Eyes, Hypnotize Your Lover, and Hypnotic Realities).

My Voice Will Go With You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson

- Edited and with Commentary by Sidney Rosen

Tone:

Folksy, paternalistic anecdotes and worshipful commentary

Valuable for:

Another dose of Erickson and his powerful approach to the unconscious mind, although little that can't be found in a better form in Hypnotic Realities.

Some nice stuff if looked at purely as folksy life wisdom: "When dealing with a problem of difficulty make an interesting design out of it. Then you can concentrate on the interesting design and ignore the back-breaking labor involved."

Many examples of Erickson's conversational, storytelling method of therapy, where the patient's unconscious absorbs the point of sometimes apparently pointless stories (there's some good examples of confusion and boredom being used).

Douche-o-meter (1-5):

4. I have a hard time with Erickson's quite explicitly paternalistic orientation. Richard Bandler writes, "He only had five goals for people to get well: get out of the hospital, get a job, get married, have children, and send him presents. That was his definition of a cure." It's nice to believe in all-wise gurus, who will forcibly steer your life for your own good, but with statements like "acne can be cured by removing all mirrors" and that he got someone to win an olympic gold medal by telling them "It would be all right,” to do so, he was at least partly full of shit. And that's in an account from inside the cult! One from outside (reported by Bandler): "Virginia [Satir] had met Milton and thought he was creepy and didn’t want anything to do with him." More than a couple of the stories he tells involve a woman getting her breasts out during the session - and he makes sure to remark on the attractiveness level of almost every single female patient.

I could only find one story Erickson tells where he did not effect a miracle cure: a woman who came to him about weight loss.

In the case of the woman who was not motivated, this was also easily determined when she would not follow the simple suggestion of climbing Squaw Peak. Erickson had already guessed that she was lazy and self-indulgent when he saw her general demeanor, which included the ostentatious, artificial fingernails. ... After she had left, the group was interested in why Erickson had asked her to climb Squaw Peak. Did he want her to “get in touch with her own feelings”? Did he want her to accomplish a task successfully? His answer, surprisingly, was “So she would obey me.”

Since the book uses his own words, I could at least get a hint of his calm mastery and charisma. But as his transcriber writes, "Erickson was really quite comfortable with power."

Hypnotic language example:

“Did you know that every blade of grass is a different shade of green?”

The bottom line:

Good reading when you've run out of other Erickson books, and have braced yourself for the plunge into the cult of personality.

Richard Bandler's Guide to Trance-formation

Tone:

Half university lecture, half ego-tastic rant.

Valuable for:

Step by step therapeutic devices, e.g. "Changing Feelings by Dissociation", usually in the form of a series of visualizations. I doubt that they all work as powerfully as advertised, but they're set out in good detail so you could try for yourself.

A nice glossary/manual of Ericksonian techniques at the back (which you can get from Hypnotic Realities, but not as organized - very much unlike Erickson, he is a systematizer)

Lots of powerful hypnosis advice. "the truth is, you speak in a monotone if you’re going to speak incongruently. If you speak congruently and slowly and inflect your voice downward where you give commands, people will respond much more intensely."

Bandler is the source (loudest if not the first) for a number of ideas we now teach as fact, like about the unconscious not processing negations.

Douche-o-meter (1-5):

5. I was put in mind of L. Ron Hubbard for the level of dubious self-aggrandizement: he describes himself as a mathematician and computer scientist as well as a psychologist, and he brags about curing allergies, schizophrenia, and holocaust trauma. Having tasted blood with NLP, he introduces his freshly trademarked Design Human Engineering (DHE) and Neuro-Hypnotic Repatterning (NHR). He's extraordinarily bitchy to Erickson, who Bandler asserts never did the handshake induction correctly: "Since he was paralyzed, he couldn’t have carried out the movements as smoothly and as rapidly as is required. But I do credit him with giving me the idea."

Hypnotic language example:

“You’re sitting back in the chair, your feet are on the ground, your hands in your lap . . . and you can start to feel more relaxed.”

The bottom line:

Something of a greatest hits collection from a master, who it seems is second only to Erickson in constructing the foundation for modern hypnosis - and yet before reviewing my notes, I mostly remembered the bad impression.

Monsters and Magical Sticks: There is no such thing as hypnosis?

- Stephen Heller and Terry Steele

Tone:

Bragging and hectoring.

Valuable for:

The message that hypnosis permeates daily life and interaction - at least by their definition of hypnosis as "any transaction and communication that causes an individual to go into their own experiences and call upon their own imagination in order to respond". They write:

hypnosis is a form of education. Ideas, beliefs, possibilities, fantasies, and much more, may be “suggested” and, if accepted, and acted upon several times, they may become a conditioned part of your behavior.

The authors argue that we spend most of our lives reacting in an unconscious way. To be more functional we have to learn to detect these patterns, and when necessary, break them.

A lot of interesting material about people's different modalities (e.g. visual, auditory), and the idea that therapeutic ends can be reached by moving people between modalities. This is one of a number of specific technical procedures that are described, as in Bandler's book.

Douch-o-meter (1-5):

5. Full of hero psychiatrist stories, more dubious than the other books. There are soberly presented anecdotes about parental mistreatment causing someone to become a homosexual (when, after playing doctor with a girl, a boy is beaten, he learns "It is bad to do this with girls, but it is OK to do it with boys.") or a slut (when a girl told her mother "no", her mother said, "Don’t you ever say ‘No’!" so now she can't say no to men) And this from a book published in 1987! And these authors may be the two unfunniest people in the world: "I am now going to go out on a limb. I hope that you will refrain from sawing it off while I am perched upon it." Finally, I consider their attempts to use to use dumb NLP devices on the reader extremely tacky. ("You may wish...now...to utilize the above example..." etc)

Hypnotic language example:

"Can you remember a time you took a ride by yourself and really enjoyed the scenery or a time you were working on your hobby and felt pleased. That's a nice feeling isn't it."

The bottom line:

Read to me like a photocopy of a photocopy of Erickson, except nearly illiterate (a chapter title is "Reality...Really???"), but with something to say about the unconscious.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hypnosis

- Roberta Temes

Tone:

Basic, and reassuring.

Valuable for:

A lot of basic information that checks out with everything else I've read and experienced. It's a curious book for how it specifically tells you not to hypnotize people (not without a degree of some kind), and yet provides step-by-step instructions that would help to do it. But ostensibly the focus is on self-hypnosis, and on preparing you for a visit to a hypnotherapist (and incidentally promoting hypnotherapy). So there's much that is useful for pre-talk.

There's a lot of nice imagery and language for guiding someone in a positive way, and more accessible Erickson than maybe can be found anywhere else. There's definitely an emphasis on writing and word choice, since her approach involves constructing a script alongside the client and then just reading it to them in trance. While I have doubts whether simply giving someone a list of suggestions like this could really change their longterm behaviour, I like how this collaboration process emphasizes trust and consent.

I like that unlike every other hypnosis book I've read, the author mentions scientific experiments to support certain points - of course this is of limited value without citations. (in some cases she provides a name and affiliation, which would usually be enough to look up the study)

Since the theme of the book is, "hypnosis can help with a lot of things", there's material about how to approach bad habits, work patterns, medical procedures, parenting, social anxiety, and more, that I haven't found anywhere else.

Doucho-o-meter (1-5): 2.

Only a little - there's a part at the end of the book where, after scaring her readers away from amateur and stage hypnotists throughout, she gives a list of her hypnotherapist friends, including their office phone numbers. But in general it's warm and helpful. There are chapters on very questionable topics, like past life regression, but she adds an appropriate amount of disclaimers. She does tell a few "hero psychiatrist" tales - I wish one of these books would talk about problem solving with a client, where the first thing doesn't necessarily work. Even with as much hypnosis as I've done I know she's leaving out a lot.

Hypnotic language example:

Have you noticed how

tranquil

the ocean is today?

The bottom line:

Not a bad first book about hypnosis, both for hypnotists and people who want to be hypnotized. For more advanced practitioners, if you can look past the title, the dumb cartoons, and all the other busy affectations of the "Complete Idiot's" editorial style, there are some fresh perspectives.

The Easy Way to Stop Smoking

- Allen Carr

Tone:

Happy fast-talking 1950s salesman, with something actually helpful to sell.

Valuable for:

A wonderful case study in suggestive language, creating expectations, and reframing, all employed in the "shotgun" approach also described by Erickson. Carr didn't know what approach would stick with a given reader, so he fires off all of them, so many ways of hitting his core messages: quitting is easy; you don't like cigarettes since they're gross, you're just addicted to nicotine; and you will love being a non-smoker. Personal stories, powerful sensory images, semi-scientific facts, and straight up commands.

He uses many devices us students of hypnosis will recognize. The biggest one is his instruction to keep smoking while reading it, and not stop smoking before you reach the end. Which of course is an implicit suggestion that you will stop smoking when you finish the book.

Douche-o-meter (1-5):

2. Although this book is full of promotions for other products of his, and disses of other approaches to quitting smoking, Carr is so full of genuine joy and enthusiasm that it's infectious (which is kind of how the book works). He literally encourages you to say to yourself, "YIPPEE! I’M A NON-SMOKER!" I also enjoyed his old timey language, as in "All smokers know in their heart of hearts that they are mugs."

Hypnotic language example:

"Go to a party, and rejoice in the fact that you do not have to smoke. It will quickly prove to you the beautiful truth that life is so much better without cigarettes."

The bottom line:

Well worth a look - especially if you're trying to quit smoking.

#hypno book reviews #original content

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lunamime-blog · 5 years

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Rape

Noun (ˈrāp)

Rape, a four-lettered word which refers to unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against a person's will or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent because of mental illness, mental deficiency, intoxication, unconsciousness, or deception. Growing up I had read various instances about it. Most of them entailed the victim being outside and the perpetrator to be a stranger or an unknown person. I always thought I was far removed from the circumstances which could lead to rape. Little did I know that I would experience it in the privacy of the room of the person I trusted the most, my boyfriend at the time.

Ever since I was a little girl I had a dream, a dream to be swept off my feet by the man who would love me till the end of the time. Someone, I could truly be myself with and be unafraid. And I thought I had finally met the one just before going to college. I met him at a get together for students going to the same university. He was a sophomore and I a freshman. His charm and confidence instantly captivated me but I was cautious so after that day we started talking as friends. I felt I could really be myself with him and share everything with him. Slowly he became my best friend. After a few months, he asked me to be his girlfriend. That day my heart sang with joy. Days went by and one day he asked me for help in setting up his room. So, I went to help him out. Little did I know he had something else in mind. The moment he locked the door, my Prince Charming became my worst nightmare.

It was that day I lost my innocence and my faith in people. After the ordeal was over I asked him how could he ever do that to me and his reply still pierces my heart. He responded, “It was common sense that if a girlfriend is alone in the room with her boyfriend then she is consenting to sex?”. Does me being at a certain location negate my rights as an individual? Unfortunately, I was scared about society since I was ‘no longer pure’. He went on to comment that no other man would accept ‘a soiled woman’. So, I decided to stay with him but the ‘love’ between us was gone. The relationship soon turned toxic with him being possessive and controlling. He would just threaten to leave me and he knew I would beg him to stay since hew very well knew that I thought no other man will accept me. Till one day when I had had enough.

He left again but this time I didn’t stop him. He came back after a few days saying that he was just upset and that I had should have made it up to him. I did not heed and showed him the door. He threatened me so I sought help from a friend who went with me to file a report. In the end, he finally left me alone when he realized he could be kicked out of university if he continued with the threats. Though I had physically gotten rid of him, he still haunted me psychologically. I had closed off myself to the world. I refused to let anyone in. I distanced myself even from my family. Going amongst a group of people gave me anxiety.

The wounds took their own time but they started to heal. I was able to trust a few people and be vulnerable again. I started to make friends. The kind which would be there for me no matter what. I have started smiling at strangers again. I am again dancing and singing along my favorite songs. Though I know I am nowhere near being myself as I was before the assault and I know I might never be fully that girl again but I can see the old me resurfacing. That young girl who may not be whole again but is willing to give the world another chance. And you know what she may even meet her real Prince Charming when the time is right. But what she did find was her hero who will be there no matter what, her.

While I understand, this is written from my perspective, a woman’s it is equally important to acknowledge that men can victims of rape as well. So matter who you are, if you have been through a similar experience, know that you can emerge victorious as the only person you ever need is you. ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’.

#metoo #rape #survivor

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elaianna · 6 years

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Block Captain

One Week Ago

The passage of time was a certainty in the dismal, dim, halls that ran like a labyrinth through the network of dungeon blocks. No Sun, no Moon, hours could pass like minutes, minutes could pass as days and no man nor woman could tell a difference, merely that time continued to move on without them. Few sounds passed through the sealed corridors once a prisoner had been broken. In their first days, their days with fight left in their bodies a man could be heard screaming, threatening, for hours on end. Like all others this soon faded with their will until all that remained was the quiet murmurings of guards, their jeers toward some prisoners over others, and the rattle of chains over the ill coughs of prisoners.

As a marching jostle of plated boots and swaying chain jingled down the center corridor with a growing reverberation it heralded a newcomer to the block. The grinding of rusted bars thrummed as they forcibly were drawn open with a screeching scrape of metal on metal. After a hearty 'thump' the welcomed arrival of a new tenant to cell C-3 became known to all others around.

Steps reaching closer, away from the cell, the soles of leather boots and and plate brushing against itself brought a guard closer to cell C-1. A harsh rap of his club smacked to one of the bars of the cage, Anna's cage, before his commanding voice barked,

"Up and at 'em! Block Captain's comin' in for ya."

Elaianna's head jerked upright, having been caught in that lucid spot between sleep and consciousness where not everything seemed real but she was vividly aware of the gnashing hunger in her stomach. It took a few moments for her to register the words spoken at her.

Comin' in for ya.

Was it time then? For trial? Or for justice without seeing the rigged jury?

Chains scraped against the floor as she pulled herself up to her feet.

The room seemed to change to suit the approach of the block captain. Additional torches were brought in so that the area now felt fully lit for the first time in years, revealing it to be more than what could seem like a single room but a two-storied jailhouse unit. Guards fell quiet, their murmurings being replaced with hard snaps to attention in the wake of a slow thud of boots. Finally, as the growing sound of steps drew closer a short stool was brought forward a foot from the bars of Elaianna's cell.

Coming in to the light was a man far removed from thought to be in such a position, even less to command silence and a presence of both fear and respect. With fellow prisoner's silhouettes dotting every third cell at most, all eyes cast to the man stepping into the light, then sitting calmly facing Anna. Pale, scrawny, the man looked more at place being a librarian or perhaps with a desk job than the position he filled. Sporting a pair of glasses with one lens chipped at the top and a spiderweb of cracks running down, the man stared forward to Elaianna with his hands cupping either knee.

"Good morning, Miss Stalsworth." The man spoke in a bright, almost eerily brimming voice.

"I would like to ask you a few questions if you can be troubled, the depth of your answers will alter your stay and the welfare of those close to you. I would like you to ask honestly, and fully, is that clear?"

Licking her lips to try and moisten her mouth, there was only one response to the spindly man she saw before her. "Missus," she corrected him, voice hoarse, but defiant. They could do a great many things to her in here but they couldn't take that away from her.

With a cock of his head the thinning block captain smiled. Awkwardly, sweetly, almost smiling on at Anna like she was an old friend to whom he could admire. Turning his gaze upward to one of the guards at his side he continued that sickly smile before stating coolly,

"See to it 'Missus'-" He turned back to Anna giving her a soft nod. "Stalsworth now will go three days between food and water if you'd please."

Perhaps they couldn't take her stubborn nature from her, but at the very least they could punish it until she knew better.

"Now then, Missus Stalsworth," He continued to articulate for her. "I need names, and locations of your husband, and all leading faculty of your company as well as House. I would like to of course preface things with they are in no danger, and no harm is intended upon them, we merely wish to extend invitation properly so that they may appear before court for your trial."

As if on cue, the hungering pit of her stomach growled audibly. 'What was another day when you're already starving?' she reasoned with herself, trying to give herself some inner fortitude to accept the punishment. At least he did acknowledge her married name now. Small victories.

Brows knit together, and Elaianna's face scrunched up. Days without make up and in the lighting that was only now afforded her cell, one could see that the woman had a light splattering of freckles no longer hidden beneath the powder of make up.

"You have them in custody, don't you?"

"Well, I don't-"

With his hands opening a moment beneath his shrug, the man quickly fell back to clasping his knees.

"It's very possible some other individual has but I am just a captain, see this here?"

The man reached upward holding a hand out and waving it repeatedly before a clipboard was placed in to it by an adjacent guard.

"This is a clipboard. I'm supposed to read the questions, mark down what you say, then relay that just like everyone else. So maybe some is outdated, maybe some isn't- I am here to ask, you are to answer. Now, if they have been arrested, it has surely been for some offense like...some of the others in your company..." He began squinting, flipping over the first page of his clipboard to scan the long list of new arrivals. "But let's assume they haven't, so- names and locations, please."

Did she dare to hope she was lied to? That he didn't have her children? Her family? ...Or was it just a ploy to do that, to get her hopes up only for them to take joy in shattering her. Paranoia had always been present for the Lady, but now more so than ever.

"I've been locked up for what? Weeks?" How long had it been? She couldn't tell anymore. "How would I know where they're at by now?"

The man stared on in silence again. A quill in hand he made a show of continuing to stare at her as the tip scratched across the surface of his clipboard, striking away the top line.

"How very disappointing. I was hoping you'd be more keen on speaking up on your own behalf- question two then...please give a through accounting of your occupation of Stormhollow. You came with the initial-" He pauses to squint at the page, trying to make out the questions he was told to ask before huffing.

"Your family was loyal, you broke that, held the land illegally- blah blah, elaborate why, please."

"I inherited the land. I held it legally. This entire thing is an illegal farce," she rasped, the last syllable hissing from her lips. She swallowed once, trying not to wince as it felt like she was swallowing shards of glass from how parched she was.

"My actions came from your Lord demanding slaves of his people, like some savage."

"I...don't care." The man spoke briskly, his hands waving with the clipboard still in grasp in a light swirling motion.

"Clipboard. I just read the questions, I've had plenty of traitors rustle their chains at me about 'this is all a misunderstanding' and 'I'm innocent, do you know who I am'." He mocked in a higher pitch tone that minced each word.

"I'll just mark it down as you did not care to do as asked, sound good?" His brows rose, lips pulling back in a tight withdrawal. "Good." After a moment of scribbling, the man mouthing each word as he wrote just as he'd stated to her, his eyes rose again to meet her.

"How about assets? Care to tell us what assets you formerly possessed, Missus Stalsworth?"

"Irrelevant," she answered, staring in defiance. She didn't formerly possess anything.

With a heavy sigh the man turned his head upwards to the guard beside him yet again.

"Please see to it Missus Stalsworth receives half her current rations for the month, remaining with the current schedule." Turning to her with a blank face, lips curled in again and brows raised expectantly he gestures his hand to her to give her the floor to speak.

"Would you like to amend, your answer, Missus Stalsworth?"

"My amended answer is that should you wish me to speak, then it will be through my lawyer."

With the soft clicking sound of his tongue thumping in a deliberate manner off the roof of his mouth the block captain stared onward. Jaw stilling, eyes blinking in a slow, measured pace he began to shift in his seat, one cheek then the other until he wiggled in to comfort.

"Well then I don't see anything else needed here, I'll hand this information off to the judge and we'll see if we can't get you sentenced sooner rather than later then, aye?" With a pleasant grin he leaned forward, the stool being pulled away as he took to his feet again. "You have yourself a lovely day now." He'd point forward in a short movement.

"Oh but uhm, one final question then just for you- how would you rate your accommodations thus far?" Stepping back toward the center of the room, the captain cast his gaze upward and began scanning the room of torches that were now being dimmed. "I'm thinking about painting...new decorations maybe, make it feel more homely you know?"

"Perhaps your head on a spike," came the sour remark. "I think that'd make a lovely embellishment for down here."

@atc-wra @eidrich-crone @thomasstalsworth @gloryofsteel

#WRA #IC #Canon #RP #Anchor Trading Co

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